An aerial view of the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C.(Jason Reed / Reuters)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
Bipartisanship is a rare and endangered species in today’s bitterly divided Washington. Except when it comes to one thing: the Pentagon budget.
From Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow House Democrats to minority leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans, all agree that the Defense Department—which already boasts a budget higher, in comparable dollars, than its levels during the Cold War, and bigger than the combined military budgets of the next nine highest-spending countries—must have more. The only argument is how high the “top line” should go.
Ironically, this lone area of bipartisan consensus is a tribute not to the wisdom of the center but to its folly. Even as the military budget keeps going up, Americans are growing less and less secure.
Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
Katrina vanden HeuvelTwitterKatrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.