TToday in America, 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and 21.5 million families pay more than 50% of their income on housing. We have one of the highest levels of childhood poverty of almost any developed country on Earth, and 25% of older adults are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. In other words, the United States has fallen far behind other major nations in protecting the vulnerable, and our government has failed millions of working families.
But while so many Americans are struggling to work, the United States is spending the bulk of its money on the military. In the next few days, with relatively little debate, Congress will pass the National Defense Authorization Act, approving nearly $900bn for the Department of Defense (DOD). When nuclear weapons spending and “emergency” defense spending are included, the total will approach $1tn. Now keep us connected to more than nine neighboring countries.
I don’t often agree with Elon Musk, but he’s right when he says the Pentagon “has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800bn is being spent.” The Department of Defense is the only government agency that failed to pass an independent hearing. He recently failed to make his seventh attempt in a row and could not fully account for his huge share of $4.126tn in assets.
Few people who have studied the military-industrial complex have any doubt that massive fraud, waste, and cost are at work in the system. Defense contractors charge the Pentagon by 40% of the usual – and sometimes more than 4,000%. For example, in October, RTX (formerly Raytheon) was fined $950m for inflated DoD bills, lying around labor and material costs, and paying for services to procure foreign businesses. In June, Lockheed Martin fined the Navy $70m for aircraft parts, the latest in a long line of similar abuses. The F-35, the most expensive weapon system in history, ran hundreds of billions in eliminated money.
Today, as a result of strong industry consolidation, a large portion of the Pentagon’s budget now goes to a few large defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics and Grumman Northrop. This consolidation of the industry has been extremely beneficial: since 2022, these four contractors have brought in $609bn in revenue, including $353bn in US taxpayer money, and $57bn in profit. During the same period, they spent $61bn on deals and stock buybacks to make the rich stockholders even richer.
These defense contractors also offer exorbitant Cius repair packages. In the last three years for which information is available, these companies paid their CEOs a combined more than $257m – with annual salaries that are about 100 times more than the secretary of defense and 500 times more than the average newly enlisted service member.
How will this be done? How do we keep handing over huge amounts of money to companies that rob American taxpayers and often engage in fraud? The answer is not complicated. These companies – like drug companies, insurance companies, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry – spend millions in campaign contributions and lobbying. In the recent election cycle, defense contractors spent nearly $251m on lobbying and contributed nearly $37m to political candidates. Surprise, surprise! Most of Congress voted for the heavily inflated military budget, with few questioning it.
The lack of accountability at the Department of Defense is not the only market for American taxpayer dollars. It is the price of life. The United States of America is providing several billion dollars to help defend Ukraine from Putin’s invasion. When defense contractors said they could not ramp up production without more taxpayer support, Congress repeatedly appropriated emergency funding, including nearly $78.5bn to buy equipment and services from major defense contractors.
How do those “loyal” teams respond? They are price jacked. RTX increased prices for the Stinger missile from $25,000 in 1990 to $400,000 in 2023. Lockheed Martin and RTX have raised the cost of the missile system from about $263,000 per unit just before the war to $350,700 this year. Similar price hikes were made for Patriot missiles and other weapons. You would not be mistaken: every time a contractor gains profit, weapons reach fewer fronts. The greed of these defense contractors has not only cost American taxpayers; He kills Ukrainians.
The United States needs a strong military, but we don’t need a defense system that is designed to make huge profits for a few powerful defense contractors. We don’t need to spend nearly a trillion dollars on the military when half a million Americans are homeless and children are starving.
At this moment in history, we should be wise to remember what Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former five-star general, said in his farewell speech in 1961: “In the councils of government we must be careful not to acquire undue authority. whether they were wanted or nothing, or military industry complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of corrupt power exists and will continue.’ What Eisenhower said in 1961 was true. It is even more true today.
Vote against the military budget.