Donald Trump made an uncharacteristically blunt statement on his priorities last week, inadvertently encapsulating the modern right’s philosophy. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all of these individual things. They can do it on a state basis; we can’t do it on a federal basis. We have to take care of one thing: military protection,” Trump said at a private lunch at the White House.
When Trump’s budget proposal came out on Friday, it became clear that he meant it. He wants Congress to increase the defense budget by 44 percent in 2027. This would make just the requested increase nearly the same size as the total military budgets of China and Russia combined.
Some of this spending would simply add to the national debt, but Trump proposes to offset part of it by cutting 10 percent of nondefense spending from the budget. Many of the proposed cuts would come from reducing or eliminating housing aid and health programs for marginalized groups, agricultural research, and teacher training.
Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic enumerates the proposed cuts in great depth here and rightfully points out that much of the proposed spending will inevitably go to weapons contractors to replenish supplies that have dwindled in the course of the United States’ reckless war on Iran.
Since the beginning of the year, stocks for four of the five biggest Department of Defense contractors are up: 25 percent (Lockheed Martin, which has nearly double the number contracts as the next largest contractor), 5 percent (RTX), 20 percent (Northrop Grunman), and 1.5 percent (General Dynamics). In contrast, the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the Nasdaq index, which measure the market more broadly, are down between 4 and 6 percent over the same time period. Defense contractor Boeing’s stock is also down; compared to the other companies, a larger percentage of Boeing’s revenue comes from nonmilitary business.
Cut health care and…
Auteur: Ben Beckett
