Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) lauded MAGA billionaire Elon Musk’s initiatives aimed at curbing defense expenditures as part of his mission appointed by Trump to identify avenues for reducing government costs.
“Elon Musk is correct,” Sanders tweeted on Sunday. “Last year, a mere 13 senators opposed the Military Industrial Complex alongside a defense budget rife with inefficiencies and corruption. This needs to change.”
This positions Sanders, a democratic socialist who has been the runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination on two occasions, as an unexpected ally to Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the two fervently capitalistic MAGA supporters chosen by President-elect Donald Trump to undertake significant reductions in federal expenditure.
They are set to head a commission called the “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE, which will investigate substantial reductions in government spending and report back to Trump within a two-year timeframe.
Recently, both have suggested the prospect of either halting or increasing defense budgets, with Ramaswamy arguing against “automatically boosting the amount.”
The defense sector represents the largest slice of discretionary spending for the federal government, with the Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2024 projected at $841 billion, approximately 12.5% of the entire federal budget.
This sector has also faced scrutiny over claims of wastefulness and budget overruns. Sanders pointed out that the Pentagon has now failed its seventh consecutive audit concerning its $4.1 trillion in assets and $4.3 trillion in obligations.
Last year, the Defense Department acknowledged it could only properly account for half of its assets.
Additionally, lucrative contracts awarded to private companies result in billions of taxpayer dollars flowing under a system with inadequate oversight.
“Numerous federal contracts have gone without scrutiny for years,” Musk and Ramaswamy noted in a joint Wall Street Journal op-ed last week. “Conducting large-scale audits during a temporary halt in payments could bring about significant savings. The Pentagon’s failure in its seventh consecutive audit implies that the agency’s leadership lacks a clear understanding of how its annual budget exceeding $800 billion is utilized.”
In October, the Defense Department disclosed that $431.4 billion, or 71%, of defense spending was allocated to contracts last year.
Among the top beneficiaries, Lockheed Martin garnered $61.4 billion, RTX received $24.1 billion, and General Dynamics got $22.9 billion.
Many contractors essentially operate as taxpayer-supported entities—Lockheed, the largest defense contractor in the U.S., derived 74.2% of its sales from the U.S. government in the third quarter, while U.S. commercial sales accounted for just one percent of total revenue.
Consolidation within the defense sector has also resulted in higher profits for a select group of firms.
Despite these matters and expressed concerns from legislators across party lines, the Pentagon’s budget has continued to rise with minimal pushback during budget voting processes.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) produced a report last year documenting numerous former government officials who transitioned to lobby for the defense sector.
“To maintain financial inflow, defense contractors frequently recruit ex-Pentagon and other government officials to assist in securing defense contracts from their previous colleagues,” states the report.
