April 27, 2024 (EIRNS)—The 2022 budget deal spending caps and the fact that U.S. military spending is already financed entirely by borrowed money, is no deterrent to war hawk members of Congress who think that the $860 billion that the Biden Administration has requested for the Pentagon is not enough. The two top members of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee made comments this week that they are ready to blow past the spending caps. “We’re not sure that the caps are going to hold,” subcommittee chairman Jon Tester (D-MT) told reporters this week. “We’ll see what happens.”
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Senate’s top Republican appropriator, has signaled an openness to spend more than the proposed defense topline, Politico reported. She noted that the budget cap “does not even begin to cover inflation, much less the growing and dangerous threats we are facing around the globe.… It’s clear that the budget is woefully inadequate,” she claimed in remarks to reporters this week.
