In a 344-81 vote today, the House of Representatives passed their version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a $696 billion spending bill which far exceeds the amount of money sought by the Pentagon and the Trump Administration
The bill has a base $621.5 billion funding, nad $75 billion in the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund, which includes at least $10 billion that are earmarked as part of the OCO but intended to be spent on domestic military spending.
The bill was supported by a majority of Democrats, and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. Indeed, only eight Republicans voted against the bill, with three other abstentions. The bill still has to be reconciled with its Senate alternative before becoming law.
President Trump had proposed a very large increase in military spending, compared to those sought in recent years, with an eye on a bigger Navy. Congressional hawks were deeply critical of even this large proposed increase as insufficient, and sought to outdo it with a bigger, pricier version.
There still hasn’t been a proper resolution to the 2011 sequestration rules, which Congress has ignored every year since at any rate, but on paper, the legal cap on the pre-OCO budget is supposed to be $549 billion, which will obviously be far exceeded.
Obviously this is by far the biggest military spending bill on the planet, many times what the second largest military, China, spends in a year.
When they didn’t do an effing thing to earn a single red cent of that money and have zero actual accountability for any of it, of course they’ll vote to spend as much as they can on whatever useless garbage catches their eye.
Over a trillion ‘spent’ on militarism,domestic and international from the greatest purveyor of violence and the largest exporter of terrorism in the world today…It grows…This feeding war machine all with profit in mind, will collapse upon itself.
Whew! They kept it under 700 billion.
$US 1.00 (2017) = $US 6.07 (1971)
The significance of 1971 was the Nixon Shock, a final de-linking of the $US from any official gold standard, ultimately ending Bretton Woods (1973) and the dawn of the Petrodollar (1974).
That would make today’s military budget $US 4222.03 billion in 1971 dollars, in other words around $US 4.2 trillion.
(dollartimes .com calculator)
And this is nation complain about North Korean missiles.
Nuclear proliferation is the answer to keep this bastards honest.
DOD budget is the biggest scam ever…corporate welfare….votes back home…more failed wars…rip-off.
DOD budget is the biggest scam ever…corporate welfare…votes for corrupt politicians…feeding the beast…rip-off.
…..And add another 300 billion to that price tag for all the other WAR on TERROR crap. CIA, Dept of Energy(NUKES), NSA etc…..and this price tag of ONE TRILLION is only for 365 days then every penny is gone and they need another 1 TRILLION. WAR is a RACKET like General Butler wrote.
In that extra $300B is almost $200B for VA Benefits, the $1T price tag is very real. That puts our Defense spending at 5.2% of GDP, the 3.5% number is a myth.
Empire burning itself out on death and destruction. Same as it ever was.