Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) has called for a ban on defense contractor stock trading within Congress, saying it’s wrong that lawmakers are able to personally profit from approving hundreds of billions of dollars to fund militarism in the U.S. and across the world year after year.
In an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press, Tlaib said it is “incredibly disturbing” that Congress has passed yet another record-high military budget while issues at home, like child poverty, go ignored and unfunded — and that some members of Congress may be padding their own pockets by doing so.
“When it comes to the Pentagon budget, I never hear my colleagues ask, ‘How are we going to pay for it?’” Tlaib wrote.
“But when it comes to addressing critical issues here at home, like ensuring every American has clean drinking water, fighting the climate crisis, providing universal school meals to every hungry child, ensuring quality childcare for every family or guaranteeing health care as a human right, my colleagues tell me that we just don’t have the money,” she went on.
Tlaib advocated for the passage of her bill, the Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act, introduced last year. The bill would bar members of Congress, their spouses and their dependent children from being able to trade any form of asset from defense contractors or else face a hefty fine.
She pointed out that defense contractors rake in tens of billions of dollars in profits along with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars each year — while also funneling hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying efforts to ensure that the profits keep coming.
According to Sludge, at least 50 members of Congress and their families own stock in defense contractors, with their collective holdings totaling as much as $10.9 million as of 2023, the publication found. The top company stock held among these lawmakers is Honeywell, “an American company that makes sensors and guiding devices that are being used by the Israeli military in its airstrikes in Gaza,” Sludge found.
“Our elected officials should not be able to profit off death. They should not be able to use their positions of power to get rich from defense contractors while voting to pass more funding to bomb people,” Tlaib wrote. “The American people deserve better. We are sick of politicians profiting from endless wars.”
Late last year, Congress passed an $895 billion military budget — a record high amount. The legislation passed in the House 269 to 144, with 81 Democrats voting for the bill that also bars the Department of Defense from citing the official death toll of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
About half of the Pentagon’s budget goes toward defense contractors each year. Much of those funds go toward profits for defense contractor CEOs and shareholders, as former Pentagon officials have said that the defense industry is rife with extreme price gouging.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is unable to even keep track of all of the money it’s given each year. The Pentagon is the only federal agency to have never passed an audit, and last year, failed its seventh audit in a row.
A large portion of the average American’s taxes end up going toward militarism. Last year, the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies found in an analysis that, in 2023, the average American paid over $5,000 in income taxes toward militarism and related projects like border patrol, with $2,974 of that amount going toward the Pentagon. Lockheed Martin, one of the largest defense contractors, received $250 from the average taxpayer, the group found.
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