If you looked at the U.S. military budget without knowing otherwise, you\u2019d probably guess we were in World War III.<\/p>\n
Our military spending is now the highest it\u2019s been at any point since World War II \u2014 and Congress keeps adding more. The House of Representatives just passed legislation that will take military spending to $895 billion<\/a>, while the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a bill that would total $923 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Those totals don\u2019t even include the military aid to Ukraine and Israel that was included in the $95 billion war package<\/a> Congress passed this spring. We\u2019re teetering closer and closer to a $1 trillion military budget.<\/p>\n Adjusting for inflation, the last time the national security budget topped $1 trillion was in 1945, the final year of World War II.<\/p>\n Unlike a world war, there\u2019s nothing happening today that can justify this level of spending. Even the war in Ukraine and the decimation of Gaza (which is being carried out with U.S.-supplied weapons<\/a>) account for just a small fraction of overall spending.<\/p>\n So what\u2019s all this spending for?<\/p>\n It\u2019s to keep the U.S. military machine running as it has since World War II, with the more or less explicit goal of global military domination. That goal is shared by many in Congress. But members of Congress also receive constant encouragement \u2014 and campaign funds<\/a> \u2014 from for-profit, corporate military contractors who can expect to receive about half of the total military budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n But it turns out that global military dominance is pretty expensive. And luckily, it\u2019s not at all necessary to safeguard U.S. security.<\/p>\n After 20 years of disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, too many in Congress and military leadership haven\u2019t learned that having the biggest, strongest military in the history of the world costs a lot \u2014 more than $21 trillion in the first 20 years of the millennium<\/a> \u2014 but doesn\u2019t make the world any safer.<\/p>\n Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) called for adding another $55 billion to the already-gargantuan Pentagon budget \u2014 supposedly justified by competition with China. But the U.S. military budget is already more than three times higher than China\u2019s<\/a>.<\/p>\n