A Trillion Dollars a Year — Will It Buy America a Better Defense?

The Pentagon had a very merry Christmas but all the American taxpayers got was a lump of coal.
The U.S. Congress passed an omnibus spending bill that awarded the Pentagon $45 billion more than originally requested – a record $816.7 billion dollars – out of $858 billion for the national defense establishment. The Veteran’s Administration, which is really just deferred defense spending, requested $301.4 billion, and the Intelligence …