By Connor Murray and Emma Sandifer
In mid-October, many members of the Center’s team took our mission of educating decision makers on the road. This time, instead of Members of Congress and their staff, we engaged an even more consequential group: the people they work for. Together with a team of experts from other organizations, Center staff traveled to Omaha, Nebraska to address what lawmakers’ silence on outrageous Pentagon spending costs everyday Americans. Our speakers explored the implications of runaway Pentagon spending, featuring examples of costly, unnecessary programs, blunt analyses of the increasingly unethical systems that enable them, and the human health and security needs that we lose along the way.
Now that the event is over, we wanted to take stock of what we heard, what we saw and why we hope to be able to engage additional communities across this country in the future.
Alexandra Bell, former Senior Policy Director at the Center and now President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, set the scene as our moderator by reminding us of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s prescient warning about the military industrial complex and runaway spending for the Pentagon more than 50 years ago. “Six decades later, our defense budget is about to break the trillion-dollar mark…trillion, with a ‘t’,” she said. “This budget might potentially make sense if it were reducing threats to this country and our allies, but the opposite seems to be happening.”
This echoes much of what Center staff see regularly when engaging on these topics. Unfortunately, the few Members of Congress who are interested in pragmatic, rational defense spending and believe that we can spend smarter are vastly outnumbered.
Gabe Murphy, Policy Analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, took up the theme of the military industrial complex’s intentional misuse of taxpayer funds and the policymakers who don’t hold them accountable, just as President Eisenhower warned about. He explored the “almost entirely additive approach” taken by the United States when it comes to Pentagon spending. “And it’s getting worse,” he added. “Over the last 25 years of this century, Pentagon spending grew by about 48% (adjusted for inflation) …then last year alone, it grew by 18%.”
The “all of the above” approach taken by the United States to field both legacy and emerging programs that too often overpromise and underdeliver guarantees severe waste and also ignores the strategic choices and prioritization that our national security depends on, instead treating money itself as the strategy.
Lindsay Koshgarian, Program Director at the National Priorities Project, reminded attendees that record-breaking defense spending is not inevitable; it is a choice. While that may seem like a basic proposition, it is important to remember that we can invest taxpayer funds in ways that keep our communities safer and healthier without compromising national security.
“People are struggling,” she noted in the context of the ongoing affordability crisis. “People need help, and we have the means to [help] if we can make better choices about how we spend our money.”
The reality is that the Pentagon has more money than it knows what to do with, she said, noting that last year, the Pentagon spent $95 billion on contracts in a single month. “That’s 10 times the size of the entire budget of the Environmental Protection Agency for a year.”
She highlighted President Trump’s choice to fund the unpopular war in Iran at the direct expense of critical human needs like childcare and health insurance.
Julia Gledhill, Research Analyst at the Stimson Center, dove into one of the most egregious examples of waste in the Pentagon budget, the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program, and the role corporate military interests play in ensuring the program stays funded despite its myriad issues.
The acquisition costs alone, she noted, are about $141 billion, which is 81% higher than initially estimated.
“Imagine if you had hired someone to do work on your house and they were 81% overbudget, would you continue with them? Probably not.”
The Pentagon and Congress have doubled down on this deeply flawed program on the taxpayer’s dime. Julia highlighted that the main contractor for two of the three legs of the nuclear triad, Northrop Grumman, spent nearly $9 million last year alone lobbying the government to maintain this alarming status quo and identified that as a key reason for continued funding of programs like Sentinel.
Joe Cirincione, noted national security expert, author and a board member of our sister organization, Council for a Livable World, said he believes the national security spending and its budget process has been “corrupted.” He identified that as a core flaw in our current military posture.
This corruption, he said, has been “blessed” by our most senior officials and is epitomized by the Golden Dome missile defense system — a program widely acknowledged to be technically infeasible and destabilizing.
“I don’t know of any study that thinks this is a good idea,” he said. “Yet the president of the United States wants to spend $50 billion this year on that system and that’s just a down payment on the estimated $1-2 trillion that the system would cost should it ever be built.”
In the end, he noted, “what’s basically happened is that the Pentagon budget has become a slush fund…some of it is going to sweetheart contracts and some of it is outright corruption.”
Our speakers’ insights drove home another lesson from President Eisenhower’s speech, that “only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Alexandra concluded by saying that no improvement can happen unless American voters, in both parties, demand more from our representatives. “Eisenhower warned us, and the question now, 60 years later, is are we going to listen to him?”
We were thrilled to interact with members of that alert and knowledgeable citizenry in Omaha. It reminded us all of the very real impacts of our work and the importance of breaking out of our Washington, D.C. bubble. With gratitude to our partners at the Prospect Hill Foundation and Nebraskans for Peace, we hope to replicate this programming in other communities.
Editor’s note: Be sure to watch the full event on YouTube or check it out broken down into a few Nukes of Hazard podcast episodes.
