This past week was full of terrible things from our president using profanity to describe peaceful protestors to rising tensions between our president and the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, leading to the dictator succumb to name calling to millions of people’s healthcare being debated and uncertain. Underneath all of this drama that our president created, a 700 BILLION dollar military defense bill was passed with ease through the Senate. Only eight senators opposed this bill, demonstrating the bipartisan support in increasing our military spending.
The bill can be broken down into the following by the Senate: $640 billion goes towards the Pentagon’s budget and $60 billion goes towards budget-cap-exempt war funding. Now, for the problems with this bill.
A. This bill breaks statutory caps on defense spending.
This makes me question the checks and balances placed in our government to ensure democracy within our country. If the Senate can chose to overspend and militarize our country amongst themselves without reaching out into communities to see what Americans priorities are, are they even representing the American citizens? (click here for more information about how our government represents the wealthy, not the public) This just personally angers me – the fact that our government doesn’t have the actual public in interest, but rather the wealthy elite.
B. This bill proves that our government does not act in the interest of the public.
700 billion dollars. What else could that be funding? Universal healthcare, living places for the homeless to rehabilitate, free college at all public and private universities (a tenth of the defense bill cost), and there’s probably even more. If the government truly cared about its citizens, it would not be preparing for war (it’s been shown that the more weapons present among people, the more violent they become). Instead, the government should invest in its people, in the working class, in us.
C. This bills is increasing our likelihood for war.
Please educate yourself about the Cold War, and then you’ll know what I’m talking about.