This spring, President Joe Biden is poised to ask Congress for the largest defense budget in history. These budget increases would be on top of an already historically high defense budget.
At the end of 2022, Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law. The bipartisan bill, passed overwhelmingly by the Democrat-controlled Congress, appropriated $858 billion in defense spending. That $858 billion was $45 billion more than Biden requested and $90 billion more than last year’s defense spending bill.
In every election cycle, voters, politicians and pundits are quick to question how we are going to pay for programs like Medicaid and Social Security. Budget hawks, however, rarely ask how, in 2022, we can afford a $90 billion increase in defense spending, or the $858 billion total price tag. Now, Biden wants to increase defense spending even more.
