Want to Cut the National Budget? Start With Military Spending.

The White House released its budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025 on March 11 .

The biggest driver of overspending is an unrealistic, self-indulgent, and—yes—militaristic national defense strategy.

This is no way to craft a budget or defend a country, says Julian Zelizer .

David Rothkopf : Defense strategy depends on industry that exploits government for its own benefit.

He says major corporations that act as military contractors pocket about half of all Pentagon outlays while ripping off the government in a multitude of ways.

But what’s even more striking is how little they accomplish with the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars they receive year in, year out, he says.

The arms industry increased cash paid to its shareholders by 73 percent in the 2010s compared to the prior decade .

A recent Washington Post investigation found that the United States has made 100 arms sales to Israel since the start of the war last October .

The relentless supply of military equipment to a government that the International Court of Justice has said is plausibly engaged in a genocidal campaign is a deep moral stain on the foreign-policy record of the Biden administration.

The case of Gaza may be extreme in its brutality and the sheer speed of the slaughter, but it underscores the need to rethink the purpose of and funding for America ’s foreign and military policies.