Global Campaign on Military Spending
Demilitarize! Invest in People's Needs
by IPB
NEW YORK – Late last year, I interviewed Bernie Sanders while working on my biography “Bernie.” I asked him if he planned to reduce the defense budget if elected president. “We will take a hard look at that,” he told me, agreeing that there’s an awful lot of bloat in America’s military spending that ought to be cut.
Why doesn’t he say that now?
by IPB
by Rich Smith
Russia is in trouble.
According to its own Finance Ministry, the nation depends on revenue from crude oil and gas exports to fund 50% of its budget. But with the price of crude oil itself down nearly 50% over the past year, finding money to fund government programs is getting harder.
Result: Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov recently warned that crude oil prices of $50 per barrel (oil costs about $58 now, but has fallen as low as $46 in recent weeks) could siphon as much as $45 billion in revenue out of government coffers this year. This, Siluanov said, could necessitate budget cuts of as much as 10%. But there’s one part of the Russian state budget that won’t be cut at all: defense. Read more from source: The Motley Fool
by IPB
By Christopher Harress
The House of Representatives on Thursday passed a combined version of National Defense Authorization Act of 2015 that will see defense spending set at $585 billion for 2015. After a bipartisan vote of 300-119, the legislation will now head to the Senate, where it is expected to be voted on next week. The equivalent figure for fiscal 2014 was $615 billion.
