Last week, the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled its $750 billion defense authorization bill for the upcoming fiscal year, complying with President Trump’s request to raise the military’s budget by 3.1% — the largest boost in a decade. This gargantuan spending increase is unnecessary given the current strength of America’s military and the Pentagon’s poor track record of budgetary waste. It’s high time that Americans hold the military industrial complex accountable.

Currently, the United States spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined — China, Saudi Arabia, India, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Keeping in mind some of those countries are close allies, it simply makes no sense to spend as if another Cold War is around the corner. While hostile international actors certainly remain, none amount to the existential threat that was the USSR for the better half of the 20th century.