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Taking Axe to 'Human Needs Budget', Trump and Musk Nowhere to Be Found at 'Slash the Pentagon' Event
"While the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been on a rampage to root out 'waste, fraud, and abuse,' they've been ignoring the biggest money pit in the entire federal government," said Rep. Summer Lee.
Feb 12, 2025
As billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency makes its way through federal agencies with the aim of cutting spending that goes toward protecting workers' rights, providing disaster assistance and healthcare in the Global South, and defending Americans from corporate greed, Democratic lawmakers are demanding to know why Republicans are pushing to increase the already bloated Pentagon budget.
"While American families struggle with skyrocketing healthcare costs and grocery bills, Republicans are gearing up to fork over another $150 billion to the military-industrial complex," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) at a press conference titled "Slash the Pentagon" with government watchdog Public Citizen on Tuesday.
The event was held as the Senate Budget Committee prepared to begin a markup Wednesday of Senate Republicans' budget blueprint that was recently released, which could add $150 billion to the Department of Defense (DOD) budget.
The spending would be focused on improving "military readiness," expanding the U.S. Navy, building an air and missile defense system the Trump administration has called the "Iron Dome for America," and investing in nuclear defenses.
The senator said adding to the Pentagon's budget—which already stands at nearly $900 billion—won't make Americans safer, because "the doomsday that Americans fear in the 21st century isn't being vaporized by a nuclear bomb."
"It's the doomsday diagnosis of cancer, it's medical debt, it's housing payments or loan payments, it's grocery bills and heating bills," said Markey. "Let's finally put the people before the Pentagon."
As progressive organizers have noted in recent weeks, despite the fact that President Donald Trump campaigned as a populist—and won the support of a majority of working-class voters while high earners swung toward former Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election—the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spent the early days of Trump's second term seizing data and pushing for the shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education, attempting to take control of a major payment systemat the Department of the Treasury, and looking to cut spending at the Department of Labor.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon—which has failed seven consecutive audits, unable to account for its spending even as it swallows up 14% of the federal budget—has barely registered as a target of DOGE.
"While the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been on a rampage to root out 'waste, fraud, and abuse,' they've been ignoring the biggest money pit in the entire federal government: the Department of Defense," said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.). "The people want a more efficient government, quality healthcare, housing costs that don't skyrocket, and affordable eggs and groceries—not a bloated military budget that doesn't make us any safer. Maybe DOGE should take a look at that."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) added that DOGE's actions so far will leave students with disabilities without resources and threaten senior citizens who rely on Social Security.
"We don't have clean drinking water in our country, but we always have the money for war," said Tlaib. "I'm sick of it. If our government has endless money to bomb people, they have money for clean air and water, guaranteeing healthcare as a human right, and making sure no child goes hungry. Our elected officials are choosing to spend money on endless war instead of the American people."
Trump and Musk have begun answering some questions from the press about whether DOGE will address DOD spending, with the president saying Sunday that DOGE will likely find "hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse."
Musk has criticized the Pentagon's $12 billion F-35 program as "obsolete," and some lawmakers have drawn attention to exorbitant spending at the department on luxury meals, toilet seats, and soap dispensers.
But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday expressed hope that spending cuts would focus on climate programs, saying the Pentagon "is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We're in the business of deterring and winning wars."
The DOD is the "single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases in the world," as the Costs of War project at Brown University said in a 2019 report, and Trump's former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, acknowledged that the DOD must "pay attention to potential adverse impacts" of the climate crisis, related to national security.
On Tuesday, Musk was also questioned about DOGE's priorities at the Pentagon, with a reporter asking whether he has a conflict of interest in examining the DOD's spending, given his role of CEO at SpaceX, an aerospace company that receives about $22 billion in defense contracts from the department.
Musk shrugged off the concern, telling the reporter that he isn't personally "the one filing the contract, it's the people at SpaceX," and adding that defense contracts received by his company are "by far the best value for money for the taxpayer."
SpaceX was handed a new $38.85 million contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Monday.
Meanwhile, said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman, as Republicans head toward the budget reconciliation process, "money for the Pentagon will come directly cutting spending on human needs. The money that will go to Lockheed Martin or Palantir will come directly from Medicaid and food stamps and other programs for the poor and vulnerable."
"But with the plundering of the human needs budget made plain," he said, "the American people are not going to stand for—and will defeat—the Republicans' Pentagon boondoggle proposal."
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'We Do Not Consent,' Says Warren of Illegal 'Power Grab' as Judge Halts Trump Order
Multiple lawmakers and advocacy groups argue that the White House's freeze on federal grant and loan funding is unlawful, and two legal challenges are already in progress.
Jan 28, 2025
Amid a flurry of sharp remarks from U.S. lawmakers in response to President Donald Trump's order to halt federal grant and loan funding across a wide swath of government programs and agencies, Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday demanded action from her colleagues on Capitol Hill.
"While President Trump illegally pauses federal funding from Congress, the Senate must not be business as usual," Warren (D-Mass.) argued on social media before the freeze was supposed to take effect. "We do not consent to this lawless power grab."
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed Sean Duffy, Trump's pick for secretary of transportation, and is set to consider various other controversial nominees—including Doug Burgum for interior secretary and Chris Wright for energy secretary—this week.
After the freeze was announced in a memo by Matthew Vaeth, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, Democrats called for halting the Senate Budget Committee's consideration of Russell Vought, Trump's choice to lead OMB, but according to a spokesperson for the GOP-led panel, it "will proceed with Mr. Vought's nomination as scheduled."
The freeze was set to begin at 5:00 pm ET Tuesday, but nonprofit and business groups took legal action, which led Washington, D.C.-based U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan to direct the Trump administration not to block funding until a February 3 hearing.
Democratic state attorneys general are also working on a case. That lawsuit, The New York Timesnoted, "opens up another front in what will be a long legal fight led by Democrat-led states and progressive activists to stop President Trump's aggressive second-term agenda in the federal courts."
Some activists and lawmakers—including Warren—also want members of Congress to more forcefully fight back against illegal moves by the Trump administration, even though the president's party has narrow majorities in both chambers.
The president and executive branch "can only erode the checks and balances and grab power from another branch with House and Senate Republicans' consent," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said on social media. "I encourage my Republican colleagues to grow a spine and affirm that we're a co-equal branch of government and not just a dictator's advisory committee."
"And no... I'm not actually holding my breath here for these folks," the progressive lawmaker added.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, said in a statement: "Bottom line: This unconstitutional memo must be rescinded. The American people—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—must come together to defeat this move towards authoritarianism. If President Trump wants to change our nation's laws he has the right to ask Congress to change them. He does not have the right to violate the United States Constitution. He is not a king."
Since the November elections that led to Republicans controlling the White House and Congress, Sanders has joined voters and grassroots organizers in urging the Democratic Party to learn from its devastating losses and actually deliver for working people. Those same voices have urged Democrats to actually serve as an opposition party while Trump is in office.
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group that came out of Sanders' 2016 run, said in a Tuesday statement that "Trump's unilateral freeze on federal aid is an assault on working families, public programs, and the pillars of our already fragile social contract. This is a hair-on-fire moment, and Democrats must act accordingly."
"Halting funding for life-or-death programs like Medicaid, school meals, housing, childcare, and other public services is a calculated effort to dismantle government services and public goods," he added. "With Trump prioritizing the billionaire class over the needs of everyday Americans, Democrats must be relentless in standing up for the people. This is policy violence, plain and simple."
Ahead of 5:00 pm, as the Medicaid payment portals across all 50 states went down, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dodged questions about which programs would be impacted during a press briefing. She later said on social media that "the White House is aware of the Medicaid website portal outage. We have confirmed no payments have been affected—they are still being processed and sent. We expect the portal will be back online shortly."
After the briefing, ABC Newsreported on another memo from OMB:
An OMB memo obtained by ABC News senior political correspondent Rachel Scott also sought to shed light on the freeze's implications.
According to the memo, "In addition to Social Security and Medicare, already explicitly excluded in the guidance, mandatory programs like Medicaid and [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] will continue without pause."
"Funds for small businesses, farmers, Pell grants, Head Start, rental assistance, and other similar programs will not be paused," the document read. "If agencies are concerned that these programs may implicate the president's executive orders, they should consult OMB to begin to unwind these objectionable policies without a pause in the payments."
"Still, the pause could have sweeping implications," ABC pointed out, "as the federal government funds thousands of programs, including housing subsidies and educational grants."
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House Progressives Say US 'Must Suspend Offensive Weapons' to Israel
"Failure to do so not only risks our leverage in ceasefire negotiations, it undermines our country's own national security and weakens America's commitment to human rights as a cornerstone of our foreign policy."
Dec 17, 2024
Twenty progressives in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday wrote to top Biden administration officials arguing that "the United States government must suspend offensive weapons" to Israel over its destruction of the Gaza Strip, citing federal and international law.
Led by Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and Greg Casar (D-Texas), the incoming Congressional Progressive Caucus chair, the lawmakers began by thanking U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for their October 13 letter threatening to cut off weapons to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government if it did not dramatically improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
"However, despite your administration acknowledging that the Netanyahu government did not fully address the United States' concerns over Gaza and has failed to meet all of the conditions stipulated in this letter, the State Department decided not to take further action, including the suspension of offensive military assistance, to ensure full compliance," the Democrats wrote.
"We believe continuing to transfer offensive weapons to the Israeli government prolongs the suffering of the Palestinian people and risks our own national security by sending a message to the world that the U.S. will apply its laws, policies, and international law selectively," they continued. "Furthermore, a failure to act will put Israeli lives in danger by prolonging Netanyahu's war, isolating Israel on the international stage, and creating further instability in the region."
The new letter comes just over a month away from President Joe Biden leaving office and follows one from last week signed by 77 House Democrats—including Casar—that demanded "a full assessment of the status of Israel's compliance with all relevant U.S. policies and laws, including National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act."
This one goes further, explicitly urging the Biden administration to suspend offensive military transfers and warning that "failure to do so not only risks our leverage in cease-fire negotiations, it undermines our country's own national security and weakens America's commitment to human rights as a cornerstone of our foreign policy."
"We remain committed to saving Palestinian and Israeli lives. This means doing everything possible to prioritize the release of hostages, secure a lasting cease-fire deal, and move toward long-term peace," the 20 progressives concluded.
In addition to Lee and Casar, Tuesday's letter was signed by Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Joaquin Castro (Texas), Lloyd Doggett (Texas), Veronica Escobar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Al Green (Texas), Sara Jacobs (Calif.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Hank Johnson (Ga.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia C. Ramirez (Ill.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
It came on the same day as a lawsuit filed by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans accusing the U.S. State Department of creating "unique, insurmountable processes to evade the Leahy Law requirement to sanction abusive Israeli units."
As of Tuesday, the 14-month Israeli assault on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack has killed at least 45,059 people and wounded another 107,041, according to local officials. Israel's slaughter and starvation of Palestinian civilians have led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice as well as International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
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