Reps. Lee & Pocan React to President Biden’s Pentagon Budget: “Pentagon Budget Fails to Reflect our Nation’s True Needs”
President Biden’s FY2022 budget proposes a 1.7% increase in total defense spending from $740 billion to $753 billion.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Mark Pocan (D-WI), co-chairs of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus, released the following statement in response to President Biden’s proposed FY2022 budget for the Department of Defense:
“If budgets are moral documents, a $13 billion increase in defense spending is a failure that doesn’t reflect this country’s actual needs. In the last year, the biggest threat to our nation was a global pandemic and we were drastically unprepared for it. Now, we’re proposing a defense spending increase that alone is 1.5 times larger than the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s entire $8.7 billion budget. We need to redefine what defense and national security means in this country. Job security, healthcare security, housing security, climate security—these are the national security crises we should be defending the American people against—not more futile wars abroad or lucrative contracts for private defense contractors.
“The Pentagon cannot even pass an audit, why on earth would we throw another $13 billion at an agency filled with fraud, waste, and little to no oversight? Congress must act this year to cut what we spend on war and refocus on the most pressing challenges confronting Americans and the world.”
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