The Senate overwhelmingly voted down Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) National Defense Authorization Act amendment to slash the nation’s military budget by 10% on Thursday.
Members voted 88 to 11 against the motion, which would cut down the Pentagon’s annual budget “excluding accounts and funds relating to military personnel, the Defense Health Program, and assistance to Ukraine,” according to text of the amendment. The measure would also penalize the Pentagon if it were to fail another audit and highlight fraud by defense contractors. Sanders has long criticized federal defense spending levels as bloated and urged significant cuts.
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Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, failed to get much support from either party. It required 60 votes to pass. Instead, more than 80 senators voted against it. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was a rare GOP vote in favor.
Members have spent the last week debating the NDAA, which sets Pentagon policy and authorizes $886 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2024, a bill that the House passed earlier this month with several partisan provisions that are certain to be on the chopping block when the bill eventually goes to conference committee.
The Senate is racing to push the must-pass package through the chamber before the August recess, which unofficially begins when business concludes on Thursday evening.
The progressive senator wrote in an op-ed this week that he believed, “more military spending is unnecessary,” arguing that the $886 billion budget “is more than sufficient to protect the United States and our allies.”
“The United States spends more than three times what China spends on its military,” Sanders said. “This record high defense spending would come in spite of the end of the war in Afghanistan and despite the fact that the United States spends more on the military than the next 10 countries combined, most of whom are allies.”
Sanders added that “much of this additional military spending will go to line the pockets of hugely profitable defense contractors — it is corporate welfare by a different name. Almost half of the Pentagon budget goes to private contractors, some of whom are exploiting their monopoly positions and the trust granted them by the United States to line their pockets.”
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“Let’s be clear. Defending the American people is not only about pouring money into the Pentagon. It’s about making sure our children go to good schools and will have a habitable planet when they get older. It’s about making sure that every American has a decent standard of living and can enjoy quality healthcare and affordable housing,” he explained, going on to argue that the US cutting military spending is a “good first step” toward making “fundamental changes to our national priorities.”
There was little chance the Sanders amendment would have survived the conference committee, where House and Senate bills are sent to work through differences. While some House Republicans, who control the lower chamber by a slim margin, and progressive House Democrats support the idea of steep Pentagon cuts, there is a strong bipartisan majority against it in both chambers.