Why do we continue to spend billions of federal funds on expanding an already bloated military? Aren’t there better things — like health care, housing and the environment — we could be spending that money on?
Congress doesn’t seem to think so. Despite a year of negotiations over President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better spending plan, Republicans and Democratic holdouts like Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., continue to criticize the package, citing its breadth and cost as the primary barriers to their support.
Yet in early December, a bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate approved a $768 billion Pentagon spending bill. The cost was more than four times larger than the Build Better Act was projected to be. The fact that politicians can support such a massive defense spending while opposing the Build Back Better Act out of concern for raising the national debt is a ludicrous double standard, especially when Build Back Better is 100 percent paid for by new taxes and revenue and will add nothing to the national debt.
