Defense Spending

"I'm not going to let us default, but I'm not going to destroy our military in the name of raising the debt," Graham said.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican, is sounding the alarm about defense spending in the bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling.

"It is the bad taste in people's mouths from spiking gas prices ... that's affecting Biden's approval rating," an economist told Newsweek.

It will be the first time representatives of the NATO nation will meet with officials from the Biden administration at the White House.

"Eastern European countries do not support the Ukrainian fight for its right to exist...out of kindness alone," military analyst Hans Petter Midttun said.

A data graphic appears to show China outpacing the U.S. on its military spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, causing some confusion on social media.

"I don't want to see the 118th Congress fall down into chaos," Republican Representative Tony Gonzales told Newsweek.

Senator Elizabeth Warren weighs in on the importance of a values-driven military and her efforts to reduce defense spending.

McCarthy told reporters after the 13th speaker vote that he believes lawmakers will "finish this once and for all" when the House reconvenes Friday night.

Officials have said Russia is running low on missiles, equipment and drones more than nine months into Putin's war in Ukraine.

The purchase of military hardware including U.S.-made fighter aircraft was part of the new budget, officials said.

One lawmaker said he "wonders when we are just going to get the amendment to have a trillion-dollar defense budget because it seems that's where we are going."

"The last time we spent 3% below [less than 3% of the GDP] was in 1940, 1998, 1999, and 2000," Graham told the U.S. Secretary of the Navy.

"Have the words 'win' and 'victory' been purged from the administration's vocabulary when it comes to Ukraine?" Senator Tom Cotton asked.

A gargantuan defense budget doesn't necessarily buy the American people more security.

Less than 1 percent of the Pentagon's new $782 billion budget is marked for Kyiv. About 50 times as much will go to for-profit corporations.

"We urge [the U.S.] to discard the obsolete Cold War zero-sum mentality and ideological bias," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.

The ban was included in the bill after South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem accepted $1 million in July to send National Guard troops to the southern U.S. border.

The $768 billion annual defense bill also includes changes to how sexual assault cases are handled in the military, and proposals for a war on terror memorial.

The updated version of the proposed spending bill came on the same day President Biden met virtually with Russia President Vladimir Putin.

Today, American elites are retreating from hard diplomacy, disarming the military and appeasing their nation's rivals.

"Simply put, as the selective service system is currently written it is unconstitutional and discriminates based on sex," Representative Chrissy Houlahan said.

President Joe Biden has talked the talk about pushing back on Chinese aggression, but the real marker of whether his administration is serious about competition with China will be its proposed defense budget.

Dr. Kathleen Hicks appears set for an easy and quick Senate confirmation

Wyoming Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney said Thursday that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's opposition to the bill was "inexcusable."

The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, despite warnings from President Donald Trump that he could veto the legislation.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the defense spending bill by a veto-proof majority on Tuesday.

At a May 15 meeting of senior officials representing the top national security agencies, the Trump Administration floated the idea of testing nuclear weapons.

Trump has repeatedly said that he will not consider any provision to rename U.S. military bases bearing the names of Confederate soldiers.

NATO defense spending has jumped over $100 billion a year from 2016 to 2019.