Every year, the U.S. funds its military and defense programs through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Work on that bill is now in full swing. This week and next, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees will “markup” this year’s NDAA, which requests an unconscionable $1.15T for endless war, wasteful projects, and massive giveaways to weapons contractors. The massive increases in this year’s military budget will come, as they did last year, from cuts to programs that help everyday Americans and the global poor afford food, childcare, education, and healthcare. Contact Congress to tell them to vote NO on a $1.15T baseline budget and instead cut the Pentagon budget request in order to reinvest in the pressing needs of the poor and vulnerable at home and abroad.

The President’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed a $1.15 trillion base budget for Pentagon spending, but the Trump Administration has also announced that it will seek an additional $350 billion through the reconciliation process in addition to pursuing a separate funding bill for the unauthorized war in Iran, which cost at least $1.2 billion per day in the first sixty days of war activity. In total, the NDAA is the first step toward the Administration’s desired $1.5T+ 2027 defense fund, up from just $900B last year. Given these runaway dollar amounts, a vote for this year’s NDAA is a vote for a dangerously unprincipled war budget.
 

We know these ballooning defense funds must come with trade-offs in further cuts to key social programs including healthcare; food and housing assistance; poverty relief; and environmental conservation and rehabilitation efforts. These crucial programs should be expanding, not shrinking. The 27.1 million Americans without healthcare coverage could be enrolled in Medicaid for $214.4 billion. The age for Medicare enrollment could be reduced from 65 to 60 for $30 billion. The housing crisis could be eliminated for roughly $1.8 trillion spent over the next decade. We call on you, as people of faith and concerned citizens, to tell your Congressional members that the baseline must be brought down and cuts to human needs programs reversed.

These reckless and unnecessary rising military costs reflect our country’s deep moral and spiritual malaise, our addiction to and idolatrous hope in violence and dominance. As Presbyterians, we know and confess that flourishing communities are built up primarily through international cooperation and through public investment that considers the least of these—NOT through lethal force or military dominance. When our nation and its leaders instead pursue grotesque and idolatrous forms of power, dominance, and further militarization, we must respond with loud lament and our confidence in the living God. Our peace is found in God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ, who calls us to a global posture of peacemaking and cooperation (Confession of 1967, 9.45b). We call on our government to accept its responsibility to care for its citizens, to “heal the sick and look out for the poor, hungry and homeless... the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in the land, to safeguard God’s gift of creation, and to promote and protect the common good” (Tax Justice: A Christian Response to a Second Gilded Age, 221th GA, 2014). 

Call on your Representatives to reorder our national priorities, resist the $1.15 trillion base Pentagon budget, and reinvest in the needs of the poor and vulnerable.