Sanders Says He’s Voting “No” on Nearly $1 Trillion Defense Budget

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has announced that he is voting against this year’s $900 billion Pentagon budget, citing the defense industry’s “massive fraud” and “waste” as Congress neglects the fact that regular Americans are struggling to survive.

In an op-ed in The Guardian on Sunday, Sanders pointed out that the U.S.’s defense budget — which, between the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and other spending for defense, will total nearly $1 trillion — is higher than the next nine top global spenders on the military combined.

“The US has fallen far behind other major countries in protecting the most vulnerable, and our government has failed millions of working families. But while so many Americans are struggling to get by, the United States is spending record-breaking amounts of money on the military,” Sanders wrote.

The NDAA is poised to come to a vote within the coming days, with the massive figure having not faced much scrutiny in Congress despite the fact that the budget balloons to extreme heights each and every year. This year, Congress is slated to authorize $850 billion for the Department of Defense directly, as well as other “national security” projects, with add-ons like nuclear weapons and emergency spending likely to push the budget close to or over $1 trillion.

Sanders pointed out that this spending is going toward an agency that has failed seven audits in a row, unable to account for its over $4 trillion in assets — while hundreds of billions will also go toward private defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, who charge the government brazenly high prices with little accountability or consequences.

For instance, the companies “jacked up prices” as Congress has appropriated emergency funds for defense contractors to expand their production capacity to make weapons for Ukraine, the senator pointed out. These four companies have brought in over $353 billion in revenue from taxpayers since 2022, turning $57 billion in profits and spending $61 billion on dividends and stock buybacks.

“Very few people who have researched the military-industrial complex doubt that there is massive fraud, waste and cost over-runs in the system,” Sanders said, pointing out that defense contractors protect their profits and large executive payouts with extensive lobbying campaigns.

“We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry,” Sanders concluded. “I will be voting against the military budget.”

In his term in office, President Joe Biden has massively increased the military budget, taking it from $740 billion in 2020 to a level this year that exceeds the amount that the U.S. spent on average each year during World War II when adjusted for inflation, as analyst Stephen Semler has pointed out.

When accounting for other military-related programs like veterans’ aid, U.S. spending on militarism in Fiscal Year 2025 will total a whopping $1.6 trillion, according to the National Priorities Project.

The U.S.’s militarism projects have horrific and deadly consequences. In the first year of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, for instance, the U.S. sent a record $18 billion in military aid to Israel. The U.S. is slated to send another $20 billion soon, enabling Israel as it carries out an ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, continually violates a ceasefire agreement in Lebanon, and occupies and attacks other surrounding countries like Syria.