The real owners ...

The real owners ...

House Dems Opposed to Cutting Pentagon Budget Got 3.7x More in Defense Industry Cash

Fewer Democrats voted yesterday to cut the Defense budget by 10% than voted for an identical proposal last year.

The House of Representatives on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to reject two amendments that would have reduced the military’s budget for 2022—one to cut it by 10 percent and another that would have lopped off just 3 percent. Republicans voted unanimously against both measures, while the Democratic caucus split on both. 

The amendment to cut the budget by 10 percent, which was offered by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was rejected by a vote of 86-332. It would have applied a 10% reduction to all the accounts and funds authorized by the NDAA besides those for the Defense Health program, military personnel, and civilian employee pay.

The Democrats who voted against the 10 percent reduction in the Pentagon budget have received, on average, 3.7 times more money in the form of campaign contributions from the defense sector since January 2019, according to an analysis of OpenSecrets data by the Security Policy Reform Institute and Sludge. The average amount of defense cash received by Democrats who opposed the amendment was $60,680, while the Democrats who supported it received an average of $16,497 from the industry. Funding from the defense sector as defined by OpenSecrets includes contributions from the PACs of Defense Department contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, as well as donations larger than $250 from those companies’ employees. 

60K for opposers, 16+ for supporters, chump change for the MIC, the real owners of the country.