STORY: U.S. military spending contributes to rising debt ceiling: expert
DATELINE: June 10, 2023
LENGTH: 00:01:47
LOCATION: Islamabad
CATEGORY: POLITICS

SHOTLIST:
1. various of Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.
2. SOUNDBITE (English): AMER ZAFAR DURRANI, Former development specialist with the World Bank Group
3. various of streets and pedestrians in the U.S.
4. file footage of U.S. military

STORYLINE:

The climbing U.S. military spending is a key factor contributing to the country's rising debt ceiling, a former specialist with the World Bank Group said in an interview with Xinhua on Friday, referring to the last week's U.S. Congress bill to raise America's debt ceiling for the 103rd time since 1945.

SOUNDBITE (English): AMER ZAFAR DURRANI, Former development specialist with the World Bank Group
"Why they raise the limits on their spending? They're fighting more wars, so they need to spend more money on these wars. So usually the cycle is: go war, make multicountry war, and then the U.S. comes and spends. In that spending cycle, which we last saw in Afghanistan, I think you can easily see that actually 80 percent of the money that the U.S. spent at the federal level went back into private pockets in the U.S.
The U.S. is one of the few countries where research in defense and defense production is pretty much privatized."

U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 into law on June 3 to avoid a historic default on government debt.

For nearly half a century, the United States has been spending beyond its means, leading to continuous accumulation and expansion of federal debt. Many financial resources have been wasted only to please some special interest groups.

Military spending accounts for the lion's share. Data from a recent report by Statista, a market research firm, showed that U.S. military spending has continued to climb since 2015, reaching more than 800 billion dollars in 2023. That figure is expected to rise to about 998 billion by 2032.

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Islamabad.
(XHTV)