What's the most amount that any of you watching this program listening
would spend for a garbage can?
Well, for the Pentagon, that number is apparently $50,000,
because that's what they paid to a military defense
contractor according to a new report from Responsible Statecraft.
Private contractors have been jacking up the prices of simple items, and
the Pentagon agreed to screw over the taxpayers and
shell out an extra $1.3 million of those unnecessary markups, including trash bins.
Again, this comes from responsible states graft.
Until 2010, Boeing charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E-3
century in a surveillance and radar plane based on the 707 civilian airliner.
When the 707 fell out of use in the United States, the trash can was no longer
a commercial item, meaning that Boeing was not obligated to
keep its price at previous levels, according to a weapons industry source.
In 2020, the Pentagon paid Boeing over $200,000 for
four of the trash cans, translating to roughly $51,606 per unit.
In a 2021 contract, the company charged $36,640 each for
11 trash containers, resulting in a total cost of more than $400,000.
The apparent overcharge cost taxpayers an extra $600,000 between
the two garbage can contracts.
But that's not all, there are other examples, of course, of egregious and
wasteful spending.
In another case, Lockheed Martin hyped the price of an electrical conduit for
a P-3 plane as much as 14 fold,
costing the Pentagon an additional $133,000 between 2008 and 2015.
Jamaica Bearings, a company that distributes parts manufactured by other
firms, sold the Department of Defense 13 radio filters that had once cost
$350 each for nearly 49,000 per unit in 2022.
The apparent markup cost taxpayers more than $600,000 in extra fees.
60 Minutes recently did an investigation highlighting the ramp in price gouging in
the arms industry, including one case in which Boeing overcharged
taxpayers by more than half a billion dollars for
missiles used in the Patriot missile defense system.
The investigation also revealed that Raytheon Technologies had raised the price
of Stinger missiles from $25,000 each to more than $400,000 per unit.
Even accounting for inflation and some improvements,
that's a seven-fold increase,
according to Shay Assad, a former Pentagon acquisitions official told 60 Minutes.
And these companies, by the way, of course, are making out like bandits.
About half of the Biden administration's $842 billion Pentagon budget request
goes to contractors.
In 2022, roughly 30% of military spending went to the big five weapons makers, which
include Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.
And again, this comes from Connor Eccles, responsible statecraft.
Cenk I remember it was like 30 or 40 years ago where there was something like hammers
were costing the Air Force several thousand dollars and
then sparked all kind of outrage.
But now it's just gotten exponentially more egregious.
>> Yeah, look, just because they wear suits doesn't mean they're not crooks.
So these guys, defense contractors overcharging us by half a billion here,
half a billion there, they're complete and utter crooks.
And their co-conspirators are almost all of the politicians in Congress.
There are some progressives that vote no on these budgets.
In fact, let's be honest, in the last Pentagon budget,
there was only one person that voted no, and it was Ro Khanna.
Yes, he's a progressive, and even everyone else still voted for it.
And so, no, this is absolutely outrageous, there's no accountability.
And the reason there's no accountability is because they literally bribe,
I'm sorry, campaign contributions.
Mainstream media are you happy that we all pretend that they're not bribes?
They're bribes, they bribe them so that they give millions of
dollars to these greasy, crooked politicians, almost all of them.
They take that, and then they go, my God, it is so important that we have defense.
No, they should not pass audits.
They should just rob us goddamn blind and give me a part of the proceeds.
Did I say that out loud?
Well, you didn't, and the media is never gonna correct you on it.
But we're now part of the media, so we're correcting your ass.
Let me give you more graphics here, graphics seven.
In December, the Pentagon flunked its fifth
consecutive audit, unable to account for
more than 60% of its $3.5 trillion in total assets.
So they can't find over $2 trillion,
they can't find it, totally unaccounted for.
Not 2 million, not 2 billion, 2 trillion.
They're like, golly, G, why did you want the 2 trillion?
Yeah, God damn it, I did want the 2 trillion.
I wanted to go to paid family leave, free college.
I wanted to go to higher minimum wage.
I wanted to go to things that actually help Americans.
Child tax credit, it was incredibly popular.
We could have spent that money on all of us.
We could have spent it on Democrats, we could have spent it on Republicans.
We spend it on independents, spend it on actual Americans.
Instead, a bunch of crooks stole it, stole it.
And then the politicians help them steal it.
And then mainstream media comes in and does the cover up.
I don't see a crime here.
Well, $2 trillion is missing, no, that's not a problem at all.
Let's talk about trans athletes in high school sports,
all seven of them, because that's the major issue.
Okay, I'm gonna give you more.
Then you get crooks like Joe Manchin, a total and utter criminal.
He's worried, though, he is worried about wasting the government, to be fair.
Okay, so let's go to graphic ten.
I cannot accept our economy or
basically our society moving towards an entitlement mentality.
I'm sorry, he didn't say that about the Defense Department or
the missing trillions of dollars from the Pentagon.
He said that about poor people when they were getting the child tax credit, and
he's like, they shouldn't get it.
You're just the average American, a bunch of people think they're entitled,
they didn't even bribe me.
They didn't contribute a single dollar to my yacht.
He literally lives on a yacht, and
all of the defense contractors bribe him 24/7.
And he doesn't mind trillions of dollars being flushed down the toilet or put into
a 50 or $500,000 trash can, but God forbid that any actual American gets money.
Well, then he's super mad about the entitlement complex.
Last one for me, graphic 11 gives you a sense of scale of our budget.
Look at the military, nearly half of the entire budget.
If once you put in veteran benefits, it's more than half.
What do we need all that defense for?
What the hell are we talking about, it's not defense?
It's to go invade random countries so they can make even more money.
Bunch of criminals.
If you stole $2 trillion, what do you think would happen to you?
Now watch Jake Caproyl jump in and blame me and go, you can't say they stole it,
they just can't find it.
You guys are a joke.
Everyone in power is a joke, and they steal from us day in and
day out, that's reality.
>> Cenk at least there's an effort by at least Bernie Sanders, of course,
to try to make the Pentagon pay for this sort of malfeasance.
He's actually gotten some support for
his bill from Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa.
So what they've done is they've rolled out a bill that essentially
would force the Pentagon not only to undergo an audit, which they do now, but
actually to pass the audit.
And if this audit it's called the Pentagon Act of 2023,
it would force every component of the Defense Department that fails an audit in
fiscal year 2024 to return 1% of its budget to the Treasury Department.
Here's what Bernie Sanders said of the bill.
The Pentagon and the military industrial complex have been plagued by a massive
amount of waste, fraud and financial mismanagement for decades.
That is absolutely unacceptable.
If we're serious about spending taxpayer dollars wisely and effectively,
we've got to and the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only agency in
the federal government that has never passed an independent audit.
And to put a fine point, Jack, on what you were saying about Joe Manchin,
that he's not really concerned about Pentagon wasteful spending, but damn,
is he really concerned about Social Security and
other social safety net programs that he says he would rather take away.
Here is Manchin talking about that just last November.
>> Looking ahead, what are the similar opportunities for Bipartisan Act?
You're gonna get your financial house in order.
We cannot live with this crippling debt.
If they don't get their house in order, if we don't look at the trust funds that
are going bankrupt, whether it be Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security,
highway, all the ones, Allen are in tremendous problems right now.
If we can't come to grips of how we face the financial challenges this country has,
then we're all gonna be paying a price that we can't afford.
>> We can't afford it, and manchin, by the way, also added, I cannot accept our
economy or basically our society moving towards an entitlement mentality.
Of course we have an entitlement mentality with our defense contractors,
that's why they are gouging us.
And, by the way, part of the problem is they don't have competition.
A lot of these contracts are no bid, so they're able to get away with jacking up
the prices because nobody else is bidding on this stuff.
And to put another finer point on this, Cenk, if you look at the total amount of
let's talk about how the US military spends compared to the top ten
other industrialized nations we spend, the United States spends more on defense
than the next ten industrialized nations combined.
And of course, if you're a defense contractor,
you are making out like a bandit.
Your stock prices are up.
You're able to give stock buybacks.
You're able to give bonuses.
You've got executives who are making $20 to $25 million a year.
And of course, because they are able to charge what they wanna charge.
And there's essentially nothing that the Pentagon, or
at least Department of Defense has been doing right now to put an end to this and
to actually ask these contractors to cost the Pentagon a fair market value.
Well, hopefully Bernie Sanders can get some traction behind his effort,
that would at least be a start.
>> So, by the way, great job by Bernie.
He's one of the very few people who's actually trying to do anything in
congress.
It's a perfectly good bill, it's literally the least we can ask for.
If you can't tell us where the money is and we have no confidence where
the money is going and whether you guys are just literally stealing it and
putting it in your pockets, then at least give us back 1% of the budget.
It has no chance of passing.
Every republican will vote against it.
And then crooks like Joe manchin who claim to care about the deficit will all of
a sudden, they're like 1% of the defense budget just because they're stealing it.
No, no, no way, no how will I get my bribes?
My yacht needs a new yacht within a yacht, I can't do that.
What a crook Joe manchin is.
And what does mainstream media call joe Manchin every time, moderate?
If you asked if you pulled Bernie's bill, the right wing doesn't want the Pentagon.
Right wing voters doesn't want the Pentagon stealing from us either,
and they don't want endless wars either.
It would pull at about 90% of Americans.
God damn it, give us at least 1% back.
If you can't pass an audit yet in congress, it has a 0% chance,
because this country is run almost exclusively by crooks.
>> And those crooks are demanding that we crack down on the waste,
fraud and abuse and Medicare.
And sure, there are various government programs.
Any government program is not gonna be perfect.
There's no such thing as perfection.
But it's so amazing to me, Cenk, that you have Republicans who are so hyped up and
so angry about the waste and the fraud and the abuse that exists in Social Security
programs and Medicare and we've got to do something about it.
And yet when you then ask them about, okay, well,
let's talk about something that actually has even more waste, fraud and abuse and
a higher dollar figure, the military.
No, we're not gonna do that, we just let the Pentagon we give the Pentagon
the money and they do what they want.
Well, that's a problem, and that just sort of underscores why I think so many
people it's not that we are necessarily anti military or anti Pentagon.
It's like we don't like the fact that the Pentagon is essentially an entitlement
program for people who make bombs and missiles.
And yes, maybe some bombs and missiles are necessary to us national security, but
it is not necessary for the taxpayers to be put on the hook for paying $50,000 for
a freaking garbage can in a plane that used to cost $300.