Military Spending Should Get the Exact Same Scrutiny That the Build Back Better Bill Gets

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives approved a proposal for the United States to spend $768 billion next year. There was no discussion of the effect this will have on The National Debt, even if this spending is in no way "paid for." Congress did not levy taxes to finance this shopping spree. It's on the national credit card. There was also no meaningful debate about what effect this injection of cash into the economy might have on inflation. In fact, there was little public debate of any kind on the fiscal ramifications of this bill, just as there is not when Congress passes this measure every year. Because it's the National Defense Authorization Act. Military spending. You may remember we exited the ground-war quagmire in Afghanistan this year, and yet we're set to spend more on the military next year than we did in 2021. And again, this is treated like a foregone conclusion in the news media and throughout the ranks of our two major political parties.

This is in sharp contrast to the Build Back Better Act, the so-called "care infrastructure" or social-safety net bill that is also making its way, far more slowly and amid rigorous debate, through the national legislature at the moment. In that case, congressional Democrats have proposed spending about $180 billion a year over 10 years on programs like the expanded Child Tax Credit (which has already lifted many millions of kids out of poverty), healthcare coverage expansion (3.4 million Americans could get on the rolls), universal pre-K, childcare subsidies, provisions to lower prescription drug costs, and climate initiatives. There are gripes to be had about the specifics of the bill. But just focusing on the fiscal dimension—and the discussions around it—the Congressional Budget Office found the bill would add $365 billion to the budget deficit over a 10-year period. That's nothing to sniff at, though it's far less than the Republican tax cuts for rich people and corporations in 2017, in part because this bill would also raise over $1 trillion in tax revenues to offset the cost of these initiatives. There are also some tax cuts involved, including some, in the House version, that would primarily benefit the rich in blue states. Bernie Sanders and some other Senate Democrats are trying to address this before the bill comes to a vote in that chamber.

Could we put universal pre-K inside the F-35s? Yichuan Cao Getty Images

Anyway, the social-spending proposal is consistently tagged as a $2 trillion initiative—the cost over 10 years—while defense spending bills are only ever discussed on a one-year basis. In reality, defense spending over the next decade will, if it continues on its current trajectory, be a more than $7.5 trillion initiative. And yet there is just zero discussion over whether we can afford to pass on this fiscal burden to future generations. There's no discussion of the NDAA's CBO score. There's next to no public discussion of the fact that we intend to buy more fucking F-35s, the most advanced fighter jet ever built that also does not really work. The Pentagon spending bill sailed through the House this week, 363-70, and it will likely sail through the Senate by tomorrow. It will get Senator Joe Manchin's vote, the same Joe Manchin who declined to back the Build Back Better bill at a Wall Street Journal conference this week—citing, in part, inflation concerns.

If you're keeping score at home, the bigger annual spending bill without tax revenue to offset it is not an inflation concern. The smaller per-year spending bill with tax hikes to offset the cost is an inflation concern.

You can say the social spending is new and needs to be debated thoroughly as a proposal. True! All major spending proposals should be subject to robust public discussion and press scrutiny on a level playing field. That means discussing all spending proposals on either a one-year or ten-year basis. Choose one! As it stands, the media is working overtime to help manufacture consent for military spending and manufacture opposition to social spending. (The supposedly lefty NPR headlined the defense bill's passage as a pay boost for the troops, something pretty much everyone supports, but which is a relatively small part of the overall bill.) We spend more than the next 11 countries combined on defense, nine of whom are allies, and we spend way less relative to most other advanced democracies to make the lives of our citizens more bearable at home.

Let's get a more honest discussion of what exactly we're doing here. Manchin is fretting over the inflationary burden of universal pre-K and making noises about pushing a Senate vote into next year—at which point the Child Tax Credit would expire and plunge millions of American children back into poverty. But the planes that don't work get a rubber stamp.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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