Military Budget

As Martin Luther King told us, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." What kind of society can regard such indiscriminate violence and taking of life as a justifiable form of defense?

A key paradox for progressives of our national political life goes something like this: everybody complains about Congress, but nobody does anything about it.

According to the way the House operates, the authorization bill is the most open opportunity to challenge current policy. When the House considers the appropriations bill, amendments can be offered to cut money for specific programs.

Obama's proposed cuts, part of a strategic rebalancing towards greater investment in infrastructure, education, and other long-term sources of American strength, are relative -- at worst, they represent a flatlining of defense spending.

A key reason that it's relatively easy to scaremonger about predictions regarding Social Security's finances decades in the future is that the language often used to talk about Social Security's finances isn't immediately comparable to anything else that most people can relate to.

We promise to provide the veterans and active service members with the full set of benefits available at the time they signed up. That set of implicit, but sacred, promises is now being threatened.

Our troops need to know that in this tight fiscal climate they still have our complete support. Former top commanders raking in seven figure salaries from taxpayers while active duty soldiers bear the brunt of the cuts sends the opposite message.

War has always been the most human and inhuman of activities. Now, it seems, its inhuman aspect is quite literally on the rise. With the U.S. military working to roboticize the future battlefield, the American way of war is destined to be imbued with Terminator-style terror.

Uncritical support of Pentagon spending will make us weaker, not stronger. We need to get our fiscal house in order while still finding money to invest in the pillars of a strong economy.

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday said Republican candidate Mitt Romney doesn't know what he's talking...

Defense Department correspondents and commentators did not have to read between the lines much to pass on the twin message that our armed forces will be managed in a leaner fashion and with a decided tilt strategically toward countering threats in Asia.

All eyes that can tear themselves away from the froth of New Hampshire will be watching the president and Secretary Panetta roll out a "strategic review," intended to guide the 2013-2018 budgets, at the Pentagon today.

Secretary Panetta is set to come out with his new "strategy" to offer his assessment on how to cut the military budget. The question: will it be the same old or will he have the courage to mandate what truly needs to be done to build a stellar military for America's national security needs?

If the Tea Party actually gave a damn about what the Founding Fathers said, they'd be screaming at the top of their lungs about getting rid of the most pernicious threat to our liberty and solvency that ever existed: our military.

Where do we want to be in 2031? We want the United States to be a healthier, more equitable and sustainable country that engages effectively with global partners to prevent conflict. Our proposed reforms would head us in that direction.

2011 is a historical moment. A worldwide movement has arisen to defend and expand the commons at the same time strong sentiment exists in this country that we cannot continue to police the world.

Agreement was reached on the debt ceiling crisis. Big deal, facetiously and, also, actually, for the Republicans actually agreed to cuts in the defen...

We've designed an entire religion around the Pentagon's untouchability. When the U.S. government nearly shut down, both parties agreed to exempt the Pentagon from a spending freeze and actually added $5 billion to its budget.

WASHINGTON -- As Congress addresses the federal deficit and begins debating next year's budget, a centerpiece of the conversation is whether to raise ...

Once again President Obama has missed an opportunity to get the country on the right track. And, if his previous negotiations with the Republicans are a measure of the likely outcome, his already weak proposal is going to get worse.

In all the talk about the outrageous salaries and benefits of teachers and government employees, how much discussion is there about the budget for the military and the spy establishment? Well, um, almost none at all.

$1.2 trillion a year. Take that in for a moment. The simplest way to grasp this is to go through what we know about the national security budget, step by step, and add it all up.