Congressman: US Spends Billions on Defense, But Is Running Out of Ammo, ‘Where Is This Money Going?’
Shortfall of bullets has begun to show up on the battlefield in Ukraine
A Democratic congressman from California is calling out both his colleagues on Capitol Hill and the US defense industry for creating a situation in which the US military is running out of needed ammunition at a time when the nation's defense spending continues to soar.
Policymakers — both Democrats and Republicans — have presided for decades over US defense spending which seems only to head for even more dizzying heights as each year passes.
Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord earlier this year called a $1 trillion defense budget “inevitable.”
And the United States now spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined — up from outspending the next 9 countries combined in 2021.
Yet, for all the big spending, the United States is running out of ammunition.
Manufacturing just isn't keeping pace, and that shortfall looms over the ongoing ability of the United States to provide enough bullets and other ammo to continue to support its allies on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Indeed, President Biden's recent decision to send controversial cluster munitions to the effort to force Russian forces out of Ukraine was driven — at least in part — to ensure that Ukrainian troops had something to fire at the invaders.
This disconnect — between the nation's high level of defense spending, on the one hand, and a shortage of ammo, on the other — has a Democratic lawmaker calling out big defense contractors for price-gouging.
“Let’s be clear, Jim, we are being gouged by defense contractors in terms of what taxpayers are being charged,” Rep Ro Khanna, of California, said in an on-camera appearance on CNN. “Here’s the question I have: We have almost a trillion-dollar defense budget, and we can’t make enough artillery to give to Ukraine? We’ve had this war for almost a year and we’ve run out of money to have sufficient artillery in terms of steel?
“Of the top 15 companies, nine of them are in China, not one in the United States. Where is this money going? We need accountability, and we need to be building the industrial base and actually having things that are going to strengthen our national security,” added Khanna, who has been a noted critic of high US defense spending.
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