U.S. can approve weapons but can’t ensure basic needs

On Jan. 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower ended his presidential term by warning the nation about the increasing power of the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower urged his successors to strike a balance between a strong national defense and diplomacy in dealing with the Soviet Union. Cognizant that America’s peacetime defense policy had changed drastically since his military career, Eisenhower expressed concerns about the growing influence of what he termed the military-industrial complex.

Today the congressional- and military-industrial weapon complex urges the continued increased spending on weapons. The military justifies it based on national security. Congressional support comes from representatives and senators where the weapons and weapons-delivery systems are manufactured.

On Wednesday, the Senate passed the compromise fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act by an overwhelming 88-11 margin, sending the $740 billion defense bill to President Joe Biden’s desk. This year’s defense policy bill was $25 billion higher than the Biden administration’s fiscal year 2022 budget request. The defense authorization passed the House of Representatives 36370 last week.

Giving $25 billion more than the Biden budget request is outrageous. The last thing we need to do is be throwing more money at the Pentagon. And it is a huge amount. It’s more than we spent in Vietnam, the Korean War, the Reagan buildup of the ’80s, all throughout the Cold War. Even at the time as Biden has pulled out U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the Pentagon budget keeps going up and up.

The budget is driven by representatives and senators who benefit from pork barrel projects in their districts. The New Mexico congressional delegation supports the building of plutonium pits at Los Alamos for nuclear weapons, which are not needed because the U.S. already has a stockpile of 3,750 active and inactive nuclear warheads plus approximately 2,000 warheads retired and awaiting dismantlement.

Another example is U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, who is the key player on the House Armed Services Committee. He has Huntsville in his state, and Huntsville is the missile capital of America — Army missiles, missile defense systems. He also gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from the weapons industry for his reelection. So there is a strong kind of pork barrel special interest push by the military-industrial complex that helps bring about this result.

“The last thing we need to do is be throwing more money at the Pentagon,” says William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. “This whole idea that China and Russia are military threats to the United States has primarily been manufactured to jump up the military budget.”

It is astounding how quickly Congress approves weapons, but we cannot ensure housing, care and justice for our veterans, nor invest in robust jobs programs for our districts.

The military-industrial complex has been replaced by the congressional- and military-industrial complex.