Once again the Biden Administration gets bipartisan support for a massive US Military Budget

Last weekend President Biden signed off on the FY2025 spending bill, which totaled $1.2 Trillion dollars. 

Michigan Senator Gary Peters released a Media Statement on March 25th about all the money he secured for Michigan in the FY2025 spending bill. What is instructive about the statement from Sen. Peters is the fact that not only is military funding listed first, but there are more military relating funding items than any of the other categories – education, environment, economy, health care, child care or government efficiency.

The statement from Senator Peters’ office with the emphasis on military funding for Michigan is a microcosm of the $1.2 Trillion FY2025 budget. According to the National Priorities Project, 69% of the FY2025 budget will fund the military, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, while a meager 31% goes to fund everything else. Just remember what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr had to say about the US budget priorities in his famous Beyond Vietnam speech, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

The total US military spending in the FY2025 budget can be broken down to: 

• $850 billion for the Pentagon
• $34 billion for nuclear weapons
• $11.6 billion in international military aid (so far)
• $62 billion in non-emergency funding for the Department of Homeland Security, including $9.3 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and $17 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
• $113 billion for Veterans’ Affairs Medical Programs.

The 31% that is left over is being divided up between education, environmental, public assistance, medicaid/medicare, transportation and all the other non-lethal programs. What this means is that militarism is prioritized over things like funding public education, the massive housing crisis in the US, the climate crisis, the health care crisis and other social issues that the majority of Americans are facing. 

Both Senators Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow voted to use the majority of US taxpayers money for militarism then on social programs, as did Rep. Hillary Scholten and the majority of the Michigan members of Congress. Remember, it is never a question of there not being enough money to fund social housing, climate justice, immigration justice or public education, it all comes down to a matter of priorities. Hillary Scholten, Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters all chose militarism as their first priority over everything else.