Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) heaped praise on MAGA billionaire Elon Musk’s plans to rein in defense spending as part of his Trump-appointed mission to find ways to slash government spending.
“Elon Musk is right,” tweeted Sanders on Sunday. “Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.”
That makes Sanders, a democratic socialist who twice came in second for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, a strange bedfellow with Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the two hyper-capitalist MAGA bros President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to take a chainshaw to federal government spending.
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The two are set to lead a commission—dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE—that will examine how to massively slash government spending and report back to Trump within two years.
In recent days, both have alluded to halting or increasing defense spending, with Ramaswamy arguing against “just reflexively increasing the magnitude.”
Defense is the federal government’s largest area of discretionary spending, with the Pentagon budget in fiscal year 2024 set at $841 billion, or about 12.5% of the total federal budget.
It has also struggled with allegations of waste and cost overruns. Sanders noted that the Pentagon recently failed the seventh consecutive audit of its now $4.1 trillion in assets and $4.3 trillion in liabilities.
Last year, the Defense Department admitted it could only account for just half of its assets.
Lucrative contracts handed out to private corporations also means billions in taxpayer money is passed on under a regime with subpar oversight.
“Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years,” wrote Musk and Ramaswamy in a joint Wall Street Journal op-ed last week. “Large-scale audits conducted during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings. The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent.”
In October, the Defense Department revealed that $431.4 billion, or 71%, of defense spending went to contracts last year.
Among the leading recipients, Lockheed Martin made $61.4 billion, RTX $24.1 billion and General Dynamics at $22.9 billion.
Many contractors are exist as essentially taxpayer subsidized entities—Lockheed, the biggest U.S. defense contractor, made 74.2 percent of its sales to the U.S government in the third quarter—U.S. commercial sales made up a mere one percent of total company revenue.
Consolidation in the defense industry has also meant fatter profits for a handful of firms.
Despite these concerns and expressions of concern from politicians on both sides of the aisle, the Pentagon budget has continued to grow with limited resistance when it comes to budget votes.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) issued a report last year that documented hundreds of former government officials who have crossed over to lobby for the defense industry.
“To keep the money flowing, defense contractors frequently hire former Pentagon and other government officials to help them win defense contracts from their former colleagues,” the report reads.
