Bernie Sanders on how he would address defense spending as president
By Tara Golshan May 2, 2019, 7:00am EDT
Excerpts:
I think a lot of the budget is pushed by the military industrial complex. You have a handful of military contractors where CEOs make outrageous levels of compensation. John McCain, the late John McCain, talked about massive cost overruns. You have the only agency in government that has not completed an independent audit. So there is a lot to be looked at.
My Republican colleagues talk a lot about fraud and waste when it comes to programs for working people, lower-income people. They dont look so much at the Pentagon, and I think thats a place to look.
Fundamentally, why I am running for president is to get our priorities right. Our priorities are that we rebuild our infrastructure, that our kids have the ability to go to college regardless of income, that we address the crisis in affordable housing, and all the other crises climate change, we have to deal with that, and it will take a lot of money. And we do not have to simply allow large defense contractors to become even wealthier.
Thats the way it works; when the president says, I want this, then fine. [If] the president says, Look, I want you to start for the first time to take a hard look at the military budget and tell me why you think you need all this money and try to pare it down, because we have other needs, then it becomes a whole other process.
https://www.vox.com/2019/5/2/18525580/bernie-sanders-plan-cut-military-spending