Budget Matters Blog

Category: Military & Security


Dear U.S. Navy: Don't Dump Your Ships in Our Oceans

For the past 40 years, the U.S. military has turned retired and decommissioned military equipment-- such as ships and tanks-- into artificial reefs.


Why Is Biden's Foreign Policy So... Conventional?

America is back—to the same old, same old.


America's Nearly $1.3 Trillion National Security Budget Isn't Making Us Any Safer

Pouring more money into endless wars, nuclear weapons, overseas bases, and boondoggle weapons programs won't protect anyone.


The Military Wasn't a Way Out of Poverty for Me

For me, the military wasn’t a way out of poverty. Instead, militarism is why so many of us are poor in the first place.


Osama's Ghost: The Economics of Overextension

Twenty years of military quagmire of the Middle East has contributed to the fraying of the U.S. economy even as China has rapidly become the new center of global capital accumulation.


Biden's Unconscionable Military Budget

With the Afghanistan War finally ending, we shouldn’t squander our “peace dividend” on costly weapons or military bloat.


Palestinian Lives Matter

We can’t say we support justice and human rights in this country while supporting violence and expulsion abroad.


The Pentagon Increase Is the Size of the Entire CDC Budget

President Biden proposed a Pentagon budget increase larger than the entire discretionary budget of the CDC.


Humanizing the People Police Kill

The standard, often unreliable reporting on police killings dehumanizes victims — a fact my own family knows too well.


Does Biden Put His Money Where His Mouth Is On Climate?

Last week the White House convened a virtual Leaders Summit on Climate with forty leaders from the world's largest economies presenting their plans to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Now that the dust has settled, what should we make of the new commitments announced at the summit?