We need to talk about the president’s 2027 proposed defense budget. It’s not like there’s been a shortage of reporting about it. But even with all that, I don’t think people have really absorbed the extent of it, it’s significance, the scale of growth. The president wants to increase the defense budget by more than 40%. That comes on top of his request for $200 billion to fund his current war with Iran.
It’s important to appreciate that there’s simply no way for the Pentagon to productively absorb that scale of resources on that timescale. Again, almost a 50% increase on a budget that is already massive in absolute and relative terms. If you think about what that scale of diversion means, you still won’t really quite grasp it, just as I’m not able to fully grasp it.
We have to see this in the context of the already massive cash diversion to ICE and the mass deportation and detention system, which the government also cannot remotely absorb. And finally the now-quite open admission from Republicans and Trump himself that they think all of this will come with massive cuts to all of the social safety net. It is a huge reorientation of the entire federal government from being a modern government, focused primarily on supporting and protecting its citizens, to one focused on, and built for, force and violence.