In what some are calling an “unprecedented” campaign, defense contractors as an industry bloc are fighting reductions in national security spending to preserve their place on the government gravy train. Spearheaded by the reportedly enlisted the help of LMG Inc., a Washington public affairs firm, the conservative Heritage Foundation, and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments to push its agenda. This is on top of at least The campaign’s website sets up a straw man by asserting that “extreme voices” are asking for massive cuts to national security, countering that “moderates are calling for a more careful approach that cuts waste and gets rid of things that don’t work or that we don’t need.”
Yet the Second to None campaign is the extreme voice, fighting to preserve a level of defense spending higher than at any point during the Cold War, the amount we spend. In fact, the U.S. spends more than five times as much on defense as China—the country with the second highest level of defense expenditures. The U.S. spends nearly as much on national security as the rest of the world combined. Even with significant cuts to defense spending, the U.S. will remain Second to None. As the U.S. faces a fiscal crisis and major conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are drawing to a close, it is only sensible that the U.S. should spend significantly less on defense.
Furthermore, no one should be fooled by Second to None’s assertion that they are the moderate voices: their website offers no recommendations to cut waste, get rid of programs that don’t work or that aren’t needed. Making specific recommendations would likely upset this alliance of defense contractors whose united front is fighting simply to keep their spigot of money flowing.
Also, true to the lobbying effort’s name, defense contractors are the top recipients of defense spending. Since fiscal year 2003, when the war in Iraq began, more than half of all Department of Defense (DoD) contractors. Spending on weapons programs has long been dominated by contractors. A much lesser known fact is that contractors also receive a majority of all dollars spent on the Commission on Wartime Contracting recently found that $34 billion has been wasted or misspent on service contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congressional Research Service. In fact, the DoD could fire more than 115,000 contract workers in Iraq and Afghanistan without firing a single American.
Now, the industry that has been overcharging taxpayers for years, siphoning off more national security spending than all of our men and women in uniform, is bankrolling a lobbying campaign to keep the money rolling in. The Super Committee should make taxpayers and our men and women in uniform Second to None, not the overpaid, unaccountable defense contractor industry.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.