#Secret government weapons drivers#

Two pilots killed in crash at National Championship Races in Reno House Dem leader offers support for VP Harris after Pelosi remarks raise. Trump casts shadow over Biden impeachment inquiry Jimmy Carter, Rosalynn ‘coming to the end,’ grandson says Singer Maren Morris leaving country music, blames the ‘Trump years’ House GOP strikes internal deal as shutdown approaches It’s time for President Biden to use his executive power to pull the curtain back on hidden political spending by those who benefit from government contracts. We can all agree that secret money in politics has been the norm for too long, but it doesn’t have to stay this way. More transparency would take the power out of the hands of defense contractors and give it back to the people. With the stroke of his pen, Biden can issue an executive order to require all government contractors that receive more than $1 million for federal projects to disclose every last penny of their political spending, including six-figure checks to trade associations that pressure members of Congress and prop up their preferred candidates. President Biden has the power to stop the hidden payoffs and secretive spending that juice out-of-control Pentagon budgets. And the major contractors also fund Pentagon spending advocacy groups like the Air Force Association, the Navy League and even the Submarine Industrial Base Council, not to mention state and local groups that lobby for more Pentagon spending for their communities. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Defense Industrial Association, function effectively as money laundering machines to do the dirty political work that corporations don’t want their shareholders or the public to know about. Corporations like Lockheed Martin also write big checks to trade associations under the guise of paying “dues” to these groups. Wasting money on dysfunctional aircraft instead of spending it on things we need actually costs jobs.Īs for the millions the weapons industry spends on campaign contributions and lobbying, that’s just the political spending we know about.

A lot of the states listed on the map have only a handful of jobs related to the F-35, and over half of the jobs are in just two states - Texas and California.Īnd another thing Lockheed Martin doesn’t want you to think about is that virtually any other expenditure of the same funds would create more jobs - 40 percent more for infrastructure or green energy, one and one-half times as many in health care, and nearly twice as many in education. But its claims that the F-35 creates jobs almost everywhere are simply false. Lockheed Martin even has an interactive map on its website that shows its version of how many jobs the F-35 creates in each state.

It’s also their exaggerated claims about jobs in key states and congressional districts. So, for about $20 million in campaign cash and lobbying expenses, Lockheed Martin has convinced Congress to buy even more defective and obsolete fighter planes than the notoriously wasteful Pentagon had claimed to need.īut it’s not just the campaign money or the armies of lobbyists that help major contractors cash in. And this year key committees in both houses have voted to add F-35s beyond what the Pentagon even asked for, pushing the annual cost for the system to nearly $12 billion - more than the entire discretionary budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. House of Representatives, there is even an F-35 caucus that organized a letter – signed by 132 members, both Democrats and Republicans – calling for more F–35s than the Defense Department had requested in its fiscal year 2022 budget proposal. Lockheed Martin, the corporation that makes the F-35, spends roughly $7 million per year on campaign contributions and $13 million a year on lobbying. A 2021 report from Open Secrets reveals that, over the last 20 years, the defense sector has dropped $285 million in political donations and $2.5 billion on lobbying to influence Congress and the federal government.

#Secret government weapons drivers#

The three main drivers of excessive spending on the Department of Defense are strategic overreach, pork-barrel politics and corporate lobbying. Why is that? And what can we do about it? The Pentagon’s budget keeps climbing, year after year, and Americans are no safer. Unfortunately, many members of Congress – on both sides of the aisle – are beholden to the military-industrial complex.