Politicians Should Not be Allowed to Profit from War | Opinion by Rashida Tlaib

It’s incredibly disturbing that children in our country are drinking lead-contaminated water — while the U.S. Congress passed another record-breaking military budget of $895.2 billion. That’s nearly a trillion dollars going to weapons and war, and the Department of Defense can’t even keep track of where it’s all going. The Pentagon just failed its seventh audit in a row.

Even more disturbing is the fact that some members of Congress who own stock in war manufacturers benefit financially when they vote to pass funding for war.

When it comes to the Pentagon budget, I never hear my colleagues ask, “How are we going to pay for it?” But when it comes to addressing critical issues here at home, like ensuring every American has clean drinking water, fighting the climate crisis, providing universal school meals to every hungry child, ensuring quality childcare for every family or guaranteeing health care as a human right, my colleagues tell me that we just don’t have the money.

Year after year, members of Congress continue to funnel billions of our tax dollars to the same defense contractors that some of them are invested in and take campaign donations from — while our communities are neglected. According to a recent Sludge analysis, as of last year, more than 50 members of Congress owned stock in defense contractors — even when their committee assignments and access to information as elected officials stood to give them insider knowledge.

I introduced the Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act to ban members of Congress and their families from owning defense stocks. In the last three years, defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), Honeywell, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman have taken over $380 billion in taxpayer money, according to data from Defense News and Forecast International, and made over $85 billion in profits, according to annual reports of the six firms. These six firms alone also spent a combined $263 million on lobbying and donated over $48 million to candidates during the past two election cycles, according to annual lobbying data listed at OpenSecrets.org. So I’m not surprised when my colleagues turn around and pass another record-breaking Pentagon budget and supplemental weapons packages — no questions asked.

No wonder so many Americans have lost faith in their representatives to actually represent them. Our elected officials should not be able to profit off death. They should not be able to use their positions of power to get rich from defense contractors while voting to pass more funding to bomb people. The American people deserve better. We are sick of politicians profiting from endless wars.

Rashida Tlaib represents Michigan’s 12th District in U.S. Congress.

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