WASHINGTON, March 7 – With the United States on track to spend more than $1 trillion on the military this year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and five colleagues this week sent a letter to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) urging him to reconstitute the World War II-era Truman Committee to investigate war profiteering and price gouging in the American military industrial complex. Sanders was joined on the letter by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

“The United States needs a strong military, and Ukraine needs our help,” wrote the senators. “But the current model must be reformed. The defense budget must be run efficiently and cost-effectively and cannot continue as corporate welfare by a different name.”

While negotiations continue around the Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations deal, Congress has already authorized an $886 billion base defense budget. When defense spending outside of the Department of Defense (DOD) budget is included, the total rises to more than $900 billion. In addition, the Senate recently passed – and the House is now considering – a $95 billion supplemental spending package, which would further increase military spending if signed into law.

Nearly half of the money going to the Department of Defense (DOD) is allocated to a handful of hugely profitable defense contractors. The DOD accounts for about two-thirds of all federal contracting and issues more in contracts than all U.S. civilian agencies put together. Yet this money goes out the door without adequate safeguards against waste, fraud, and abuse. For decades, the DOD has failed to pass an independent audit despite being required to do so by federal law and now is the only federal agency that has never passed an independent audit. Last year, the DOD could not fully account for 63% of its $3.8 trillion in assets.

In the 1990s, there were 51 major defense contractors in this country. Today, they have consolidated into five giants: Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. These big five use the monopoly positions granted them by the U.S. government to reap enormous profits, sharing more than $118 billion in Pentagon contracts in Fiscal Year 2022. This has led to rampant price gouging and the transfer of taxpayer dollars to wealthy shareholders.

“It’s therefore no surprise that defense contractors routinely overcharge the Pentagon by nearly 40 to 50 percent, lining their pockets at taxpayer expense,” wrote the senators. “For example, RTX Corporation has increased prices for Stinger missiles sevenfold since 1991, leaving the U.S. paying more than $400,000 to replace each missile sent to Ukraine. Yet somehow, RTX has the money to announce plans to buy back $37 billion in stock through 2025. Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, received $46 billion in unclassified contracts in 2022, and returned about one quarter of that amount to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks.”

The senators continued: “There’s a name for all this: war profiteering. These companies’ greed is not just fleecing the American taxpayer; it’s killing Ukrainians. A contractor padding its profit margins means that, for the same amount of federal spending, fewer weapons reach Ukrainians on the front lines. Given the urgency of providing Ukraine what it needs to defend itself from Putin’s aggression and of safeguarding taxpayer dollars, Congress must investigate this situation.”

The letter urged Leader Schumer to push to reconstitute the Truman Committee to investigate war profiteering, the effects of consolidation in the defense industry, the lack of sufficient oversight over U.S. military spending, and options for further use of the Defense Production Act or other federal authorities to provide for the national defense in a more cost-effective and transparent manner.

Read the full letter here.