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us department of defense
Sanders Rips Lawmakers Saying 'We Don't Have the Money' While Backing $900 Billion for Military
"I think it's time to tell the military-industrial complex they cannot get everything they want," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "It's time to pay attention to the needs of working families."
Dec 17, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday derided those of his colleagues who claim it's too expensive for the federal government to take ambitious action on national crises in housing and healthcare while simultaneously supporting a military budget that's approaching $1 trillion a year.
"I find it amusing that any time we come to the floor and members point out that we have a housing crisis, that we have some 600,000 Americans who are homeless, that we have millions and millions of people in this country spending 40, 50, 60% of their limited incomes on housing and that we need to invest in low-income and affordable housing, what I hear is, 'We don't have the money,'" Sanders (I-Vt.) said on the floor of the Senate.
"When we talk about increasing Social Security benefits, well, 'we just can't afford to do that. We just can't afford to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, or vision. We just cannot afford to make higher education in America affordable.' That's what I hear every single day. When there's an effort to improve life for the working class of this country, I hear, 'No, no, no, we can't afford it.' But when it comes to the military-industrial complex and their needs, what we hear is 'yes, yes, yes' with almost no debate."
Watch Sanders' full remarks:
Sanders' floor speech came shortly before the Senate—in an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 83-12—advanced the $895 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025. Sanders was among the dozen senators who voted no.
The legislation, which would authorize roughly $850 billion for the Pentagon despite its inability to pass an audit, is expected to pass the Senate as early as Wednesday.
Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has openly celebrated the federal government's prioritization of military spending over social programs, wrote for Foreign Affairs ahead of Monday's vote that the roughly $900 billion the U.S. spends annually on its military is "not nearly enough" and urged the incoming Trump administration to "commit to a significant and sustained increase in defense spending."
According to the National Priorities Project, militarized funding such as the Pentagon budget, foreign military aid, and nuclear weapons programs already account for close to two-thirds of all federal discretionary spending, resulting in "consistent under-investment in human needs."
In his floor speech on Monday, Sanders said that "when it comes to the needs of the military-industrial complex and their lobbyists and that industry which makes millions in campaign contributions, we give them what they want, despite the overwhelming evidence of waste and fraud."
"I think it's time to tell the military-industrial complex they cannot get everything they want," the senator added. "It's time to pay attention to the needs of working families."
A previous version of this article misquoted Sen. Bernie Sanders' remarks on homelessness in the United States.
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Pentagon Fails Seventh Straight Audit as Annual US Military Budget Nears $1 Trillion
Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation that would require the Pentagon to return a portion of its budget as a penalty for failing audits, but lawmakers from both parties have declined to consider the bill.
Nov 18, 2024
The Pentagon announced late last week that it failed its seventh consecutive audit as the sprawling, profiteering-ridden department wasn't able to fully account for its trillions of dollars in assets.
As with its past failures to achieve a clean audit, the U.S. Defense Department attempted to cast the 2024 results in a positive light, with the Pentagon's chief financial officer declaring in a statement that "momentum is on our side."
The Pentagon is the largest U.S. federal agency and is responsible for roughly half of the government's annual discretionary spending, with its yearly budget approaching $1 trillion despite long-standing concerns about the department's inability to account for vast sums of money approved by lawmakers and presidents from both major parties.
The latest financial assessment published Friday by the Defense Department's inspector general office estimates that the Pentagon has $4.1 trillion in assets. It is the only major federal agency that has never passed a clean audit, as required by law.
"Of the 28 reporting entities undergoing stand-alone financial statement audits, nine received an unmodified audit opinion, one received a qualified opinion, 15 received disclaimers, and three opinions remain pending," the Pentagon
said Friday.
Since the department's first failed audit in 2018, Congress has authorized trillions of dollars in additional military spending. According to the Costs of War Project, more than half of the department's annual budget "is now spent on military contractors" that are notorious for overbilling the government.
"The Pentagon's latest failed audit is a great signal to the incoming administration for where they can start their attempts at slashing government spending," Lindsay Koshgarian, director of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams. "Instead of gutting veterans' benefits or the Department of Education as planned, they should start with the one major government agency that has never passed an audit, the Pentagon."
Progressive watchdogs and lawmakers have long cited the Pentagon's failure to pass a clean audit as evidence of the department's pervasive waste and fraud. The Pentagon buried a 2015 report identifying $125 billion in administrative waste out of concern that the findings would be used as a justification "to slash the defense budget," as The Washington Postreported at the time.
Last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act that would have required the Pentagon to return a portion of its budget to the Treasury Department's general fund as a penalty for failing audits.
"Year after year the establishment on both sides of the aisle have prevented these amendments from receiving a single roll call vote," Warren Gunnels, Sanders' staff director, wrote on social media over the weekend.
This story has been updated to include comment from Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project.
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Pentagon Urged to Just Say No to AI-Powered Killer Robots
"The Department of Defense should declare its opposition to the development and deployment of autonomous weapons."
Mar 26, 2024
The watchdog group Public Citizen on Tuesday led a letter urging Pentagon leaders "to clarify that the Replicator Initiative will not involve the development and deployment of autonomous weapons systems," also known as "killer robots."
Last September, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks "asserted that the development of all-domain, attributable autonomy systems (ADA2) is an essential way for the Pentagon to maintain its comparative cutting-edge and keep up with the technological advancements of other states," notes the letter, which was addressed to her and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
"However, those comments failed to specify whether or not supporting autonomous weapons systems is one of the key focuses of this initiative," the letter stresses. "When addressing whether or not 'ADA2 means weapons systems,' Secretary Hicks stated: 'That's a serious question to be sure. They are not synonymous. There are many applications for ADA2 systems beyond delivering weapons effects.'"
"Autonomous weapons are inherently dehumanizing and unethical, no matter whether a human is 'ultimately' responsible for the use of force or not."
Public Citizen and the 13 other organizations argued that "this is no place for strategic ambiguity. Autonomous weapons are inherently dehumanizing and unethical, no matter whether a human is 'ultimately' responsible for the use of force or not."
Deploying lethal weapons that rely on artificial intelligence (AI) "in battlefield conditions necessarily means inserting them into novel conditions for which they have not been programmed, an invitation for disastrous outcomes," the groups warned. "'Swarms' of the sort envisioned by Replicator pose even heightened risks, because of the unpredictability of how autonomous systems will function in a network. And the mere ambiguity of the U.S. position on autonomous weapons risks spurring a catastrophic arms race."
"We believe the Department of Defense should declare its opposition to the development and deployment of autonomous weapons," the coalition concluded. "However, even if you are not prepared to make that declaration, we strongly urge you to clarify that the Replicator Initiative will not employ autonomous weapons."
In addition to Public Citizen, the coalition included the American Friends Service Committee, Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network, Backbone Campaign, Demand Progress Education Fund, Fight for the Future, Future of Life, National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, RootsAction.org, United Church of Christ, the Value Alliance, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom U.S., Win Without War, and World Beyond War.
The letter comes on the heels of Public Citizen releasing a report about the rise of killer robots, AI Joe: The Dangers of Artificial Intelligence and the Military.
The February report addresses the Pentagon's AI policy, the dangers of killer robots, the need to ensure decisions about nuclear weapons aren't made by automated systems, how artificial intelligence can increase not diminish the use of violence, risks of using deepfakes on the battlefield, and how AI startups are seeking government contracts.
The publication concludes with recommendations that Public Citizen president Robert Weissman echoed in a statement Tuesday.
"The United States should state plainly that it will not create or deploy killer robots and should work to advance global treaty negotiations to ban such weapons," Weissman said. "At minimum, the United States should commit that the Replicator Initiative will not involve the use of autonomous weapons."
"Ambiguity about the Replicator program essentially ensures a catastrophic arms race over autonomous weapons," he added. "That's a race in which all of humanity is the loser."
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