Congress must reject bloated military budget

Published 1:30 am Friday, March 17, 2017

The Trump administration and some members of Congress are developing plans to increase defense spending by $54 billion in the near term, on top of the roughly $600 billion per year the Department of Defense is already spending. Recently, more than 120 retired three and four-star generals wrote in a letter to Congress, “We know from our service in uniform that many of the crises our nation faces do not have military solutions alone.”

The United States spends roughly three times more on defense than China and about 10 times more than Russia. Wasteful spending accounts for a huge chunk of those expenditures — in the DoD’s own study, they identified over $125 billion in waste. But even with that internal study, DoD is the only federal department that cannot audit its own books.

One of many egregious examples of the Pentagon’s mismanagement of taxpayers’ money is the F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter, which is excessively over budget to the tune of billions, behind in the delivery schedule, and beset with software problems and systemic shortcomings that render the aircraft unsuitable for combat capabilities. Waste, fraud and abuse!

The Pentagon does not lack funds. It lacks a culture of fiscal responsibility because Congress does not hold it accountable — nor have the taxpayers. It’s time, as taxpayers, to contact Sens. Patty Murphy and Maria Cantwell and Rep. Rick Larsen and let them know we expect them to vote against all increases in military spending. We need an impenetrable firewall in Congress to prevent these irresponsible increases to the bloated, unaudited Pentagon budget.

Micki Jackson

Bellingham