The Growing Problem of Defense Industry Profiteering
by David Sirota


If you thought it impossible to top the image of Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) driving around a Rolls Royce and living on a yacht thanks to defense industry cash, just stop and take a look Lloyd Grove's story today in the New York Daily News. Yes, you are reading it right – a defense contractor has gotten so rich off taxpayer cash he actually held a $10 million bat mitzvah for his daughter, featuring 50 Cent, Tom Petty and Aerosmith, among others. That's right - a $10 million. On a bat mitzvah.

What do the Cunningham and $10 million bat mitzvah stories have to do with each other? In their own ways, they each touch on a subject that we rarely ever discuss in America: defense industry profiteering.


We hear a lot out of Washington about how we need to cut programs for the poor and middle class, in order to deal with the deficit or finance new tax cuts. The rhetoric makes it seem as if these programs are the real culprit driving our country into oceans of red ink.


But a quick look at the numbers shows that it is defense/security spending that is soaring, while non-defense discretionary spending has been flat. For a more local view of how most of your tax dollars go to defense and not "social programs," just see this 2005 study by the National Priorities Project.

COST-OF-WAR

To be sure - there has been a real need to shift more resources into homeland security and other%2