Back in September 2008, Senator Joe Biden offered a bit of wisdom while running for vice president on Barack Obama's ticket. In a speech criticizing the Republican presidential campaign of senatorial colleague John McCain, he claimed to be quoting his own father when he said: "Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value."
Almost 14 years later, how apt his father was when it comes to the country his son now presides over (more or less). After all, Joe's $1.75 trillion domestic social-spending package, the Build Back Better bill, is in a ditch at the side of some West Virginia road. Meanwhile, as TomDispatch regular and Pentagon expert William Hartung and Julia Gledhill, a defense analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, make all too clear today, the next Pentagon budget, at an astronomical $813 billion dollars, is heading for passage by a humongous congressional majority. (To put that figure in perspective, it's $75 billion more than Donald Trump's last "defense" budget.) Worse yet, numerous representatives, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, are already demanding yet more of the same. In fact, in think-tank Washington and beyond, there are now even calls for a future Pentagon budget that would top one trillion dollars annually. Imagine that, in a country already spending more on what's still called "national security" than the next 11 countriescombined, even as crucial elements of the domestic budget that would actually keep so many Americans more secure increasingly end up in that West Virginia ditch.
So, give Joe Biden's dad a little credit. He was all too on target. Show me your budget and I'll tell you what you do indeed value. Is there any question about that in the America of 2022? As retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore wrote recently, this country has "reached the point in our collective history where we face three certainties: death, taxes, and ever-soaring spending on weaponry and war." And that should be the definition of "insecurity." If you doubt me, just let Hartung and Gledhill fill you in on the ever more militarized "gold rush" this Ukrainian moment of ours represents. Tom