Crack Down on Pentagon Waste!
Meredith Dodson / Coalition on Human Needs
(September 16, 2023) — This week, House Republicans were unable to pass a Pentagon spending bill. But it’s not because of wasteful Pentagon spending or price-gouging by federal contractors. It’s because right-wing Freedom Caucus members want to see even deeper cuts to critical domestic programs before they agree to add tens of billions of dollars more to the Pentagon budget.
The current Pentagon budget being negotiated is an astounding $886 billion. That’s more than we spend as a country on Education, Housing, Labor, Veterans, Transportation, and Food and Agriculture combined.1
That’s why CHN is fighting to crack down on waste in the Pentagon budget and use that money to invest in meeting critical human needs.
Throwing huge budget increases year after year to the Pentagon’s corporate contractors undermines our security by preventing us from investing in the shared prosperity that comes from investments in housing, climate and public health protections, ending hunger, and more education. And Pentagon spending has been shown to create fewer jobs than comparable amounts spent on sectors including education, health care, renewable energy, or infrastructure.2
About half of the Department of Defense budget goes to military contractors. An exhaustive six-month investigation by 60 Minutes has exposed drastic price gouging by federal military contractors ― with some raking in total profits near 40%. [See video below.]
The US cannot continue to waste billions of dollars while countless children and families go without adequate housing and food.
Thank you for your support.
Meredith Dodson is the Senior Director of Public Policy at the Coalition on Human Needs.
Footnotes
1 Federal Spending: Where Does the Money Go
2 Costs of War, Employment Impact, Watson Institute, Brown University
3 Weapons contractors hitting Department of Defense with inflated prices for planes, submarines, missiles
Price Gouging:
Weapons Contractors and the Pentagon
60 Minutes, CBS
