Republicans Exempt Pentagon Waste From Budget Cuts

Of all the wasteful government programs there are, the largest number exist in the Pentagon. The military budget has long been used not so much to prepare to fight wars but to funnel money to politicians’ corporate sponsors. Many Pentagon programs now being funded are 30 years out of date, having been designed to fight the Soviet Union of the 1900s. Pentagon leaders have explicitly asked for many of these programs to be canceled, saying that they’re of no practical military use.

Republicans in Congress have promised reforms in spending, but members of the Republican leadership have taken huge amounts of money from corporations that profit from wasteful military spending. As a result, the GOP’s so-called Spending Reduction Act fails to cut even one penny in spending from the wasteful programs that have been identified as a drag on the nation’s military.

Consider, for example, the Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. It’s a vehicle that actually doesn’t fight at all, because it doesn’t work. The vehicle was conceived when back when cable television was a newfangled form of media, computers used 5-inch floppy disc drives, and Ronald Reagan was President. The corporation General Dynamics has been paid lots of money every year since then to develop the vehicle, but the EFV still isn’t functional. It doesn’t give any military advantage to the United States because it is, without ever having been deployed, an outdated piece of junk. If it were put onto the battlefield today, it would actually endanger American soldiers, rather than protect them.

The Spending Reduction Act doesn’t take a dime away from the EFV boondoggle, however. It keeps this wasteful program completely intact.

In fact, the Spending Reduction Act explicitly forbids such waste in the military from being considered for inclusion in spending cuts. What kind of politicians would craft legislation that prevents reduction in spending, and then call that legislation the Spending Reduction Act? Politicians who presume that the American people are too stupid or apathetic to notice the difference.

Don’t let yourself get taken in by this con man’s shell game of a bill. Call your U.S. Representative at (202) 224-3121 and ask that the malfunctioning Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle be scrapped, and that the broken-down Spending Reduction Act be put aside as well.

Any legislation that cuts government spending should start where the largest waste exists, and not exempt special protected classes of spending that benefit powerful corporations instead of the American people. The Spending Reduction Act fails both of these tests.