The next time we’re looking for budget cuts, don’t ignore the Pentagon

In a move that could have been marketing for the final season of HBO’s Succession, Congressional Republicans reaffirmed their position as some of the least serious people on earth. Their reckless attack on the full faith and credit of the United States led to a budget deal that places additional burdens on people who rely on food stamps while letting defense contractors safeguard record profits. After weeks of negotiations, President Biden signed the deal into law on Monday.

This deal hurts everyone, including folks struggling to put food on the table and communities trying to prepare for the ravages of climate disasters. But, in all the chaos of the debt ceiling negotiations, one federal department was spared cuts: the Pentagon.

Given the GOP’s stated preoccupation with responsible government spending, that’s an odd exception. The Pentagon is the only federal department that has never managed to pass an audit. That’s a low bar. An audit doesn’t show whether a department is misallocating funds or using them inappropriately, it simply documents whether an organization can account for its resources. That simple bar is one that the Pentagon has never been able to reach.

And even if the Pentagon were to ever pass an audit, the results wouldn’t be to the benefit of communities across the United States. Nearly half the Pentagon budget goes to defense contractors — the same contractors recently revealed to be dramatically overcharging taxpayers while reaping record profits. 

While a government default would have had harrowing results for the economy, the party supposedly obsessed with reducing government spending exempted from this debate the one government agency that has effectively lost, according to my calculations, $2.1 trillion of public funds between the couch cushions or given it away to price-gouging third parties. 

This lack of accountability isn’t new. This failure of basic good governance has not led to a pause in budget increases or resignations from top officials. Instead, Pentagon officials tell us that each failed audit is just another opportunity for them to learn that doesn’t require any consequences. 

The reason why this ridiculous status quo persists is in no small part due to how profitable it has become. Leading defense contractors spend billions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions, fueling fears about stockpiles, sponsoring wargames for members of Congress and generally making the case that the Pentagon is simply too important to bear the burdens of basic accounting or rational budgeting. 

Defense money is persuasive when budgets are expanding, but now that almost every other government department has to make sacrifices to assuage the GOP’s debt panic, it’s a good time for Congress to check the assumptions it has been making about the Pentagon budget. In a time when climate change, pandemics and poverty are the direst threats people in this country face, preserving money for F-35s that often can’t fly is senseless and immoral. When hurricane season comes, will the nuclear-armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile provide food and shelter for people? 

Austerity has failed as an economic policy and many U.S. communities are again going to experience it firsthand. The only agency in need of a little austerity is our most wasteful and disorganized government department. And if the Pentagon really needs extra money, let them rummage around in their couch cushions — I hear it’s a gold mine.

Sara Haghdoosti is the executive director at Win Without War. You can follow her on Twitter here.