By Nitya Chakraborty
Leftwing Democratic senator Bernie Sanders is a veteran self proclaimed socialist who has been consistently fighting for drastic cut in the budget of the U.S. military since his election as a young senator from Vermont decades ago. In the November elections, he won his seat for the fourth time for another six year term. The maverick senator has all through opposing the high allocations of the US funds to the war efforts supporting Israel and Ukraine. However, all his efforts failed and the massive funds inflows continued.
But this time, he has got unusual support from his political enemy Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and a key adviser to the President elect Donald Trump. Musk has been made co-chair of the Department of Government Expenditure along with Vivek Ramaswamy which is primarily meant to cut the unnecessary government expenditure in the departments. While the new Trump government may use the recommendations to do away with a large number of jobs, one focus-that is n cutting to size Pentagon that Musk is stating, has got big approval from Bernie Sanders.
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In fact, Trump also has mentioned in his recent interviews how Pentagon’s present high budget is a big waste and this can be drastically reduced. Elon Musk has gone far ahead and he is saying some the things which Sanders has been saying for the last two decades. Musk is mentioning of military having excessive funds engaging in endless wars.
“Today in America, 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and 21.5 million households are paying more than 50% of their income on housing,” Sanders began. “We have one of the highest rates 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 countries in protecting the most vulnerable, and our government has failed millions of working families.
“But while so many Americans are struggling to get by, the United States is spending record-breaking amounts of money on the military. In the coming days, with relatively little debate, Congress will overwhelmingly pass the National Defense Authorization Act, approving close to $900 billion for the Department of Defense. When spending on nuclear weapons and ‘emergency’ defense spending is included, the total will approach $1 trillion. We now spend more than the next nine countries combined.
In an interview with ‘Politico’, Sanders says “I don’t often agree with Elon Musk, but he is right when he says the Pentagon ‘has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent.’” “Very few people who researched the military-industrial complex doubt there is massive fraud, waste and cost over-runs in the system,” Sanders continued. “Defense contractors routinely overcharge the Pentagon by 40%, and sometimes more than 4000%.
“In October, RTX–formerly Raytheon–was fined $950 million for inflating bills, lying about labour and material costs, and paying bribes to secure foreign business. In June, Lockheed Martin was fined $70 million for overcharging the Navy for aircraft parts, the latest in a long line of similar abuses. As a result of massive consolidation in the industry, a large portion of the Pentagon budget now goes to a handful of huge defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.” The contractors spend their billions of defense dollars on dividends and stock buybacks–$61 billion—to rich investors while pocketing $57 billion in profits since 2022, he added.
“These companies–like the drug companies, insurance companies, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry–spend millions on campaign contributions and lobbying. In the recent election cycle, defense contractors spent nearly $251 million on lobbying and contributed almost $37 million to political candidates. Surprise, surprise! Most members of Congress vote for greatly inflated military budgets with few questions asked.”
The military-industrial-complex costs lives, too, which is another reason Sanders opposes the military money bill. “When contractors said they couldn’t ramp up production” of more planes, ammo and bombs for Ukraine “without more taxpayer support, Congress repeatedly appropriated emergency funding, with roughly $78.5 billion going to buy equipment and services from the major defense contractors.
“They jacked up prices… Lockheed Martin and RTX raised the price of the Javelin missile system from about $263,000 per unit just before the [Ukraine] war to $350,700 this year. Similar price hikes took place for Patriot missiles and other weapons. Make no mistake: Every time a contractor pads its profit margins, fewer weapons reach the frontlines. The greed of these defense contractors is not just costing American taxpayers; it’s killing Ukrainians.
“The United States needs a strong military, but we do not need a system designed to make huge profits for a handful of giant contractors. We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry.”
“In this moment in history, it would be wise for us to remember what [President] Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former five-star general, said in his farewell address in 1961: ‘In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.’”
Actually, what Ike originally planned to say, his papers reveal, was he called the combine “the military-industrial-congressional complex.” Then he crossed out “congressional.” “What Eisenhower said was true in 1961. It is even more true today,” Sanders concluded. (IPA Service)
