US Congress Approves Record $636 Billion In War Spending

While it took a lot of arm twisting, and almost a year, to get the health care bill passed late last night in the Senate, the massive biggest ever military spending bill was approved very easily on Saturday while very few people were paying attention. It seems that the US Congress, in both the House and the Senate, would rather spend taxpayers’ money on warfare than health care.

The unprecedented $636 billion bill will fund the current operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. On Saturday, the Senate approved the astronomical $636.3 billion package by an overwhelming vote of 88 in favor of the bill and only 10 Senators against it. The bill was easily cleared, last Wednesday, by the House of Representatives by a vote of 395 in favor and 34 against it. American politicians can’t really agree on much of anything lately, but an obscene and colossal war spending budget seems to be the only thing uniting Republicans and Democrats.

President Obama is expected to send Congress an “emergency spending measure” of at least an additional  $30 billion early next year to pay for the 30,000 additional troops for Afghanistan. It will bring the budget to $666 billion.

The spending bill includes the purchase of 6,600 new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored vehicles designed to better resist Improvised Explosives Devises (IED). It also includes an additional $80 million to acquire more Predator drones, a key weapon in the US arsenal for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Under President Obama, and with almost no public debate in the United States, the pace of the controversial drone bombings has sharply increased. The drone attacks were started last year during the last few months of the Bush administration.

All of this is obviously a reason to celebrate for the industrial- military complex, the merchants of death will have a very good year in 2010 thanks to President Obama and the US Congress. The American people should ask themselves a very reasonable and simple question: How much longer will this absurd and irresponsible war spending take to completely collapse the US economy?