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# To Curb Government Waste, Musk Should Start With Pentagon Contractors... Like Himself
February 20 2025
Written by Chisom Okorafor.
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GOVERNMENT WASTE - With an annual budget rapidly approaching $1 trillion, the Pentagon already gets more discretionary tax dollars than any other agency.
Now congressional Republicans are proposing to hike that figure by anywhere [from $100 billion to $150 billion](https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/house-unveils-budget-plan-with-100b-boost-for-defense/)—while slashing funding for programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs that help keep Americans on their feet.
Lawmakers have it backwards: We need to invest more in those programs and less in the Pentagon, which simply can’t account for how it’s spending our money.
We have to curb our endless spending on the military—and put that money back into our real needs, like creating jobs, educating students, protecting our planet, and much more.
Late last year, the Pentagon failed its mandatory audit—yet again.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, either—in fact, the Pentagon has failed every audit it’s ever undergone. According to the [Project on Government Oversight](https://www.pogo.org/analysis/will-pentagon-ever-be-able-to-be-audited), the Defense Department is the only department to have achieved consistent failure over nearly 35 years of government audits. Quite the achievement.
While the Pentagon may not know where its money goes, we do know that [about half](https://readsludge.com/2023/09/22/big-five-contractors-get-one-sixth-of-pentagon-budget-analysis/) of its budget each year goes to private, for-profit military contractors. The Pentagon’s deep over-reliance on these corporations not only wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, but also feeds conflicts and contributes to weapons proliferation. Ultimately, this creates a fundamentally less secure world.
Much of the Pentagon’s operations and personnel have been outsourced to “private military contractors,” or PMCs. The use of PMCs exploded during the [Iraq and Afghanistan Wars](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/social/corporate)—by 2019, there were [1.5 times as many contractors](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/social/corporate) on the ground in the Middle East as U.S. troops.
These corporations have turned our tax dollars into their private slush fund with rampant waste, fraud, and abuse.
Take for instance the time in 2020 when the Pentagon paid over [$52,000](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/06/20/the-pentagons-52000-trash-can/) for a trashcan. Or when a Pentagon contractor made a [9,400% profit margin](https://fortune.com/2019/05/14/transdigm-pentagon-costs/) off of a half-inch metal pin. Last year, reports emerged that Pentagon contractor Boeing made [almost $1 million](https://www.fastcompany.com/91220989/pentagon-audit-reveals-eye-watering-amount-boeing-overcharged-air-force-spare-parts) in profit just from overcharging for spare parts on C-17 cargo planes, such as soap dispensers.
There are countless examples of Pentagon contractors defrauding American taxpayers like this, and yet we keep writing them bigger and bigger checks. And the wealthier these companies and their executives get, the easier it is for them to throw their weight around in government.
Look at [Elon Musk](https://www.commondreams.org/tag/elon-musk), President Trump’s chief billionaire backer and the one he charged with rooting out “waste” from the government.
Musk, the wealthiest oligarch on the planet, has [many glaring conflicts of interest](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/13/elon-musk-conflict-of-interest) as he meddles in the U.S. government. Not the least of which: He’s a Pentagon contractor CEO himself, through [his company SpaceX](https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/musk-s-spacex-now-gets-into-the-spy-game-124103101162_1.html).
Contractor fraud isn’t going away—in fact, it will only get worse with the most recent Pentagon budget’s [loosened restrictions](https://jacobin.com/2024/05/defense-contractors-prices-national-defense-authorization) on how these companies can spend taxpayer dollars. Despite this, there is little political will to crack down on the companies that are bleeding taxpayers dry.
Our politicians can’t just allow the Pentagon to fail audit after audit forever. We have to curb our endless spending on the military—and put that money back into our real needs, like creating jobs, educating students, protecting our planet, and much more.
Targeting companies that make billions ripping off taxpayers is a perfect place to start.
*(Chisom Okorafor is a Henry A. Wallace Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. This article was first published in commondreams.org.)*
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