During consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 4049), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced an amendment “to reduce the bloated Pentagon budget by 10 percent and invest that money in jobs, education, health care, and housing in communities in the United States in which the poverty rate is not less than 25 percent.”
The Senate rejected Sanders’ amendment on July 22, 2020 by a vote of 23 to 77 (Roll Call 135). We have assigned pluses to the nays because national defense is an essential function of the federal government. This is not to say that the budget is not “bloated” (the Pentagon budget does contain waste, and not all military spending is defense spending), but unnecessary military spending should be cut, not transferred to social-welfare programs falling outside the Constitution’s specified powers.
