“The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.”
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders posted to X on Sunday where he criticized defense spending and agreed with billionaire mogul Elon Musk.
“Elon Musk is right,” Sanders’ post began. “The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change,” he continued.
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View on XThe post comes after a decision by incoming president Donald Trump, who appointed Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as heads of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will seek to weed out “excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”
Musk has called for massive slashes to government spending. Sanders agreed with Musk’s position on the need to cut government waste and says he hopes that the cost-cutting will also include cuts to defense expenditures.
For years now, the Pentagon has been unable to balance its budget. In 2022, the Department of Defense could not account for 60 percent of its assets.
This is not the first time he has publicly sided with Musk. In September, Sanders sided with the X CEO about solving obesity, sharing in the Senate: “Elon Musk, not one of my great political allies, recently posted on Twitter 'solving obesity greatly reduces risks of other diseases, especially diabetes, and improves quality of life. We do need to find a way to make appetite inhibitors available to anyone who wants them.' Mr. Musk is right."
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