On this edition of Your Call’s Authoritarian Playbook Series, we discuss the US military budget after House Republicans passed Trump’s $1.1 trillion defense spending bill and Pete Hegseth requested an additional $70 billion in emergency military spending to fund the US/Israeli war on Iran.
CNN reports that Trump’s war on Iran is costing US taxpayers more than $890 million per day. We'll find out how the "Big Five" military contractors – which collectively receive about a third of the Defense Department’s annual contracts – are profiting off of this and other wars, despite the immense human toll.
Guests:
Linda Bilmes, expert on budgeting and public finance, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-author of multiple books, including the international bestseller, The Three Trillion Dollar War
Catherine Lutz, Professor Emerita of Anthropology and International Studies at Brown University, co-founder of the Costs of War project, and author of numerous books, including Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century, The Bases of Empire, and War and Health
Resources:
Brown University: Costs of War
The New York Times: Trump Asks Congress for $88 Billion, Mostly for War With Iran
NPR: House passes Pentagon funding bill and a blueprint to unlock new dollars for Iran war
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The rise of the military-technology complex
Common Dreams: Defense Contractors and Big Oil Were the Iran War’s Biggest Winners
National Priorities Project: What Could We Do Instead of Spending Another $73 Billion for War?
