House committee set to boost military budget by $25 billion
House committee set to boost military budget by $25 billion
Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Organizers and Candidates, n°108 | 31 August 2021
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Situation
From what I’m hearing this amendment by Rep. Mike Rogers will be approved by the House Armed Services Committee sometime tomorrow. This’ll be on top of Biden’s $12 billion spending boost that he proposed in his President’s budget back in April, so what we’re looking at with this amendment is a proposed ~$37 billion increase in military spending in FY2022 compared to this year. If this sounds familiar, the Senate Armed Services Committee did the same thing a few weeks ago.
Analysis
Rep. Rogers took the 4th-highest amount of money from military contractors last election cycle, and military contractors typically eat between 50 and 60 percent of the military budget. Will Rogers receive a commiserate increase in campaign cash from his beneficiaries/benefactors (weapons companies) for the 2022 election cycle, should the amendment be enacted? He is behind schedule w/r/t campaign finance due to his refusal to certify the election results. But the answer is probably yes, at least based on how the broader dataset has moved over the last ~20 years.
Below is a comparison between federal funding received vs. campaign cash given by the top 5 (military) contractors. As a sample it’s fine: these firms consistently receive about 30 percent of the value of all DOD contracts, and give about 40 percent of the value of all political donations made by military contractors.
These 5 firms sent $120 million in campaign cash to federal candidates and received $1.93 trillion in contract awards from the federal government over roughly the same period. That’s a pretty impressive ROI ($1 -> $16,083).
Thanks for your time,
Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)
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