Trump’s Trillion for the Pentagon Hurts Us All
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Yesterday, President Trump and Secretary of Defense/former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth heralded their unprecedented trillion dollar budget proposal for the Pentagon.
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:
A trillion-dollar Pentagon budget is morally reprehensible. At a time when Congress is prepared to deny health care and food to vulnerable people because of purported budgetary challenges, no one should dare suggest a penny more for a Pentagon that is awash in waste and fraud.
Trump’s trillion-dollar travesty mocks the idea that his administration cares a whit about efficiency or waste. If passed, it will steal away resources needed for vital human needs to further stuff the pockets of Pentagon contractors, leaving America less safe.
Efficiency and Waste: The Pentagon pays billions for ships that don’t float and planes that don’t fly. Need anything more be said? Since being required to undergo an audit, the Pentagon has failed to pass on seven successive occasions. The Pentagon itself identified more than $100 billion of waste in 2015. Instead of using its internal report on waste as a means to advance spending accountability, the Pentagon worked to suppress it.
Strip Resources: Republicans in Congress are right now proposing massive cuts to health care and food assistance, purportedly because of budgetary pressures. More wasteful spending for the Pentagon will come directly from spending on Medicaid and nutrition assistance, vital programs that support the nation’s most vulnerable.
Corporate Contractor Bonanza: The most direct result of the skyrocketing Pentagon budget will be to make the Pentagon contractors – including new, Silicon Valley contractors with tight connections to the Trump administration – still richer. If Pentagon contracts alone were their own federal agency, they’d be the largest agency in the federal government. Defense corporations couldn’t be hurting less.
Less Safe: The Trump administration’s proposed escalation in Pentagon spending would go, in part, toward the development, purchase, and deployment of dangerous new AI weaponry and missile defense systems that are very likely to kickstart the nuclear arms race while having little prospect of working. Introducing killer robots brings the virtual certainty of starting a deadly AI arms race and sends civilian protections out the window altogether.