Defense Contractors Raking In Tax Dollars As US Economy Suffers

Your tax dollars are being used to prop up defense contractors, and the Ukraine conflict is giving them everything they’ve ever wanted. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Your tax dollars are being used to prop up defense contractors and the Ukraine conflict is giving them everything they want. It is like a bonanza out there for the defense business. And you know, there's a story behind there that everybody misses and I don't know why because it sits right there. Okay. First of all, you got a Pentagon, that's got an $800 billion budget. Okay. So what, anytime there's a conflict, whether it's Ukraine or South America or Africa, wherever, we ship out all of our missiles, for example, we might ship out, you know, 500, 600 missiles to a certain place. And then the Pentagon goes back to the producer of that missile and says, make us 500 more. So do the math. I mean, who's making the money here. The money is the weapons industry and that's what, you know, it's what we're seeing with Ukraine with $40 billion being sent there.
Well, you know, that's a really good point that I think a lot of people don't quite understand when we talk about these military budgets every single year. You know, 700 billion, two years ago, 740. Now over 800 billion this year, we are buying all of these things every single year, but we're not necessarily the ones.
Right.
Using them. What we do just like you said, oh, there's a conflict over here. Nobody's paying attention. Take a third of our javelin missiles.
Right.
Hey, by the way, Raytheon, gotta resupply.
Make us some more.
Here's your money. There's money off the trade here.
Yeah.
And so we just, we're basically the grocery store of the defense industry.
Well, here, here.
We buy the stock and then sell it.
Here's what shocks everybody. When you tell them that every tax dollar that you pay to the government, one half, one half goes to the military and most of it goes to the defense contractors. And I mean, that's a staggering number. You pay a dollar and 50 cents of that is gonna go for this type of thing, buying missiles and sending 'em all over the world. But with, with a budget of $800 billion, there ought to be some. And I, by the way, Massachusetts, I don't know if you saw that Massachusetts is coming up with a standard where they have, there's a responsibility for the government to report how they're spending tax dollars. See, this is how this has happened. If you ask, if you ask the average person out on the street, did you know that half of your tax dollars go to things like missiles and airplanes and Pentagon, yada yada? No, they don't have any idea. So Massachusetts is saying, we gotta, we gotta end that.
Yeah. They, they wanna make it completely open to where the breakdown of how your taxes in the state are spent is available publicly to everyone. And it's a great piece of legislation. Something that we absolutely should have nationally. But I still think even if we had it nationally, even if we had it printed out and delivered to everybody's front step,
They wouldn't read it.
Still half the country would say, I've never seen it. Because they choose not to care about these things. You're, you're losing your tax dollars. You know, the national Institute of health, right, the people that are supposed to be curing cancer and Alzheimer's and all these deadly diseases, they get 45 billion a year.
Yeah.
And, and almost half of that I think is spent on just the Medicaid part of Alzheimer's treat, treatments.
Mm-hmm.
Not even cures. We're wasting so much money enriching your Raytheons and your Boeings and, and Lockheed Martins.
Yeah, exactly.
And, and people are dying of things that if we actually put the 800 billion towards it, even for one year, we're gonna start curing some things pretty darn quickly.

#rof #trofire #theringoffire #progressivenews

[wandaprock]

And people on social security are suffering and can't get reform since 48 years ago

[Krazyvet]

Meanwhile, homeless veterans still roaming the streets and politicians are capitalizing on this issue. Long live capitalism.

[stryfespoint]

$800 billion annual military budget that's going to be raised again by next year, unanimous bipartisan support for billions in foreign aid to nations that don't need it (not counting Ukraine due to present situation) and not one of those EVER gets means tested, requires how it's being paid for or used to buy drugs.

[jessetorres]

US Government & media be like: Let's give billions of dollars to wealthy counties like Saudi Arabia & Israel, as well as already wealthy American citizens & the overspent military industrial complex for no real reason.
Also US Government & media: We can't afford to spend millions of dollars to help poor people in the Caribbean, Central America, the Middle East, & Southeast Asia, on top of not being able to help poor American citizens 1st.
If we cut the military industrial complex budget by just 10% (including the amount we spend on overseas bases) we could fund almost every domestic program in the United States, but too many politicians across the political spectrum don't want to do that.

[theflyingwelshman]

We the people pay for this shit, we should be allowed to say no!

[tylerhackner]

Money that could be used to help people here in America. We can and should aid Ukraine, but we cant let it go to waste by helping already rich people get even richer

[barbaracarpenter]

I wish SOMEBODY would stop and think about hungry children and those of us too old and unable to work anymore.
I'm 80 in very poor health and I don't have enough money to eat like I need to and still pay all my bills.

[BNSFGuy]

"War is a racket"

*-Smedley Butler*

[Labor_Jones]

*It's pretty simple... as the RICH GOT RICHER our Democracy became Weaker!*

[waltermlane]

It's time to rewatch Why We Fight, which is about Eisenhower's Farewell address and what has happened, especially after 9/11!

[Fate]

I had a feeling that's where they were going... so can we stop calling it Defense funding?

Or rather, can we use some of that already massively inflated budget to aid THIS country and not outsiders via weaponry?

[marieruiz]

We sent millions of 💰 money to other countries n America suffers we have hunger, low paying jobs, teachers under wages, education, etc but contractor are getting richer,

[kbusby]

Of course they are; the military industrial complex always profits from war.

[Glimmmerra]

Question: Isn't it that the Pentagon and Defense industry isn't subject to contractor bidding??? If they had to do competitive bidding those prices might come down substantially. Make them stick to a reasonable price and an actual budget that's halfway reasonable instead of allowing them to bilk the public year after year after year with absolutely no oversight whatsoever on prices. This is absolute insanity.

[s.c.]

'President Biden recently sent to Congress his budget proposal for 2023. It included an astounding $813 BILLION! for Pentagon and military expenditures. This is more than half the income taxes citizens send to the federal government each year, and a more than $31 billion increase over the already bloated fiscal year 2022 Pentagon budget. It is also more than the defense budgets of the eight next biggest military spenders put together - including Russia, China and India.

[gerrywaneck]

Every time. Every case. Follow the money.

[jadepartridge]

America might be hopeless... Norway 🇳🇴, can I come as a refugee? There's too much greed here.

[jamesmccrea]

Ancient Rome fell because of too much military spending.

[G-S-D]

Nothing new. Everyone in politics no matter red or blue. We are piss ants for politicians to do as they please.

[TheMyfastestrobot]

War, what is it good for? Money. Despicable