caitlin presents some information herein on the funding for the war department;

Last year Senator Bernie Sanders led a public push to reduce the insanely bloated US military budget by a paltry ten percent. His push splatted headfirst against a bipartisan solid steel wall which shut him down definitively.

Sanders’ bill was killed in the Senate by a vote of 23 to 77, with half of Senate Democrats stepping up to help Republicans stomp it dead. It’s companion bill in the House of Representatives was killed by a margin of 93 to 324, with a majority of House Democrats (92 to 139) voting nay.

Contrast those numbers with those who voted to approve Trump’s $741 billion military budget this past December. The House voted to approve the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) budget by a margin of 335 to 78, 195 of those yes votes coming from the Democratic side of the aisle. The Senate passed that same budget by 84 to 13. This was a substantial increase from the previous year’s budget, a trend which has remained unbroken for years.

From Macrotrends:

• U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2019 was $731.75B, a 7.22% increase from 2018.
• U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2018 was $682.49B, a 5.53% increase from 2017.
• U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2017 was $646.75B, a 1.08% increase from 2016.
• U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2016 was $639.86B, a 0.95% increase from 2015.

And those are just the official numbers going directly to the official “defense” budget. As a Nation article titled “America’s Defense Budget Is Bigger Than You Think” explained in 2019, once you add up the full costs of US wars, preparations for wars, and the impact of those wars, the annual budget is actually already well in excess of a trillion dollars.

And now, under the “harm reduction” candidate Joe Biden, it’s about to get even bigger...........read more......