Cut the Pentagon Budget

A voter in Milford asked me: how do you pay for Medicare-for-All?

My answer: start with the billions we are spending on an illegal war in Iran.

In the first six days of Operation Epic Fury, the Pentagon told Congress it spent $11.3 billion.¹ The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates $3.7 billion was spent in the first 100 hours alone — most of it on munitions that now have to be replaced.² And the costs extend far beyond the Pentagon’s ledger: gas prices are up 21% in the past month, with the national average hitting $3.63 a gallon, driven by oil supply disruptions from the conflict.³ Economists warn this war could tip the country into a recession.³

That is the cost of this war for working families — at the pump, at the grocery store, in their heating bills.

So when someone asks “how do we pay for Medicare-for-All,” I want to know why that question only comes up when we are talking about healthcare, and never when we are talking about war. The Congressional Budget Office found that Medicare-for-All would actually cost less than what we currently spend on healthcare.⁴ We already pay more per person than any country on earth — and 27 million Americans are still uninsured.⁴ Every major study shows single-payer saves money by cutting out insurance companies, reducing administrative waste, and negotiating drug prices.⁴

We are not short on money. We are short on priorities.

A Trillion-Dollar Pentagon That Cannot Account for Its Own Spending

The House of Representatives recently voted to push the Pentagon’s budget past $1 trillion — the largest military budget in the history of the United States.⁵ 149 House Democrats voted for it, representing 70% of the caucus.⁵ Recent polling shows only 3% of Democratic voters support increasing military spending.⁶ There is almost no policy issue in American politics where the gap between voters and their representatives is this wide.

The Pentagon has failed its audit for eight consecutive years.⁷ It remains the only federal agency to have never passed an audit. We cannot account for where the money goes, yet Congress keeps increasing it. Representative Mark Pocan and Representative Andy Biggs introduced the bipartisan Audit the Pentagon Act (H.R. 7555), which would impose budget cuts on Pentagon offices that fail audits — 0.5% for the first year of non-compliance and 1.0% for subsequent years, while exempting funding for personnel, families, and military healthcare.⁷ This is the bare minimum of fiscal accountability, and I would cosponsor it.

Meanwhile, cost overruns on major weapons systems continue unchecked. The F-35 program’s Block 4 modernization is over $6 billion above original estimates and five years behind schedule, with completion pushed to 2031.⁸ Lockheed Martin received hundreds of millions in incentive fees despite worsening delivery schedules.⁸ The Air Force has been forced to cut F-35 procurement from 110 per year to 48 per year for the remainder of the decade.⁸

The United States maintains over 750 military bases in at least 55 countries and territories around the world.⁹ We spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined.¹⁰ These funds should be redirected to healthcare, housing, education, and climate resilience.

The War on Iran: An Illegal War of Aggression

The United States and Israel are waging an illegal war on Iran with no congressional authorization and no declaration of war. In the first 100 hours, the military struck over 1,000 targets. A U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab — an all-girls elementary school that had been converted from a military facility years earlier. The target data was outdated. At least 165 people were killed, most of them girls between seven and twelve years old.¹¹

This is not an abstraction. These are the consequences of a trillion-dollar military budget deployed without congressional oversight or accountability.

Representative Auchincloss has been calling for war with Iran for years. In 2024, he told the Boston Globe he wanted “regime change” in Iran and said we should “purposefully poke the bear.”¹² After the strikes began, he went on WBUR and said “the world is safer.”¹³

After Trump launched unauthorized strikes on Venezuela, Auchincloss called it “blood for oil” and demanded Congress “grab hold of the steering wheel.”¹⁴ He then voted to hand that same president the largest military budget in the history of the United States, with no new restrictions on how it can be used.⁵

You cannot credibly argue that the president is acting recklessly with military power while simultaneously voting to expand that power to over a trillion dollars a year. You cannot warn against “blood for oil” on Monday and then fund the machine that makes it possible on Tuesday.

Gaza: Over $24 Billion in Complicity

The United States has sent over $24 billion in military aid to Israel since October 2023 while the International Court of Justice has ruled that a plausible genocide is underway and ordered Israel to allow humanitarian aid.¹⁵ Israel has defied that order. Continuing weapons transfers makes the United States complicit in violations of international humanitarian law.

I support an immediate arms embargo, a complete cessation of military aid to Israel, and restoring funding to UNRWA. The incumbent has voted for every weapons package and for a government funding bill that defunds the ICC, ICJ, and UNRWA. For a full discussion of our position, see our page on ending U.S. support for Israel.

Ukraine: Diplomacy, Not Indefinite Escalation

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was illegal and unjustifiable. But three years into this war, the United States should be leading diplomatic efforts to end it — not outsourcing negotiation to an administration that treats Ukraine as a bargaining chip for mineral rights.

I support a multilateral diplomatic framework that centers Ukrainian sovereignty and civilian protection, engages European allies and neutral parties, and pursues a sustainable settlement rather than indefinite escalation. The goal should be ending the war, not prolonging it.

Every month this conflict continues, more Ukrainians die, more infrastructure is destroyed, and the risk of wider escalation grows. Military aid without a diplomatic strategy is not a policy — it is an abdication of one. I do not support continuing to flood Ukraine with weapons while neglecting the diplomatic track that will ultimately end this war.

War Contractors: Palantir and the Corruption of National Security

The bloated Pentagon budget does not just fund wars — it enriches private contractors who lobby for more spending and fund the campaigns of the politicians who approve it.

Palantir made $1.5 billion in U.S. income last year and paid zero federal income tax — the third consecutive year it has been profitable while avoiding all federal income taxes.¹⁶ At the standard 21% corporate rate, they would have owed $330 million. Instead, they used a provision in Trump’s tax law to deduct “research expenses” — a euphemism for surveillance technology — saving over $400 million.¹⁶

Where does Palantir’s money come from? The federal government. Their federal contracts nearly doubled last year to $970 million. They hold a $10 billion Army contract and a $1.3 billion Pentagon contract for Project Maven — the AI targeting system that generated over 1,000 strike targets in the first 24 hours of the Iran war.¹⁷ Palantir also built ICE’s ImmigrationOS platform, the system that tracks immigrants for deportation, and quietly signed a contract with New York City’s public hospitals, gaining access to patient health data in a system that serves immigrant communities.¹⁸

Taxpayers fund Palantir through government contracts, then subsidize them again through tax breaks, while the technology they build is used to surveil and deport our neighbors and to select targets in illegal wars.

Representative Auchincloss has taken over $25,000 from Palantir executives, including CEO Alex Karp.¹⁹ Representatives Crow and Krishnamoorthi, along with Senator Hickenlooper, have donated their Palantir money to immigrant rights organizations.²⁰ Auchincloss should follow their lead.

I have signed the Purge Palantir pledge. I will not take a dollar from Palantir, its PAC, or its executives.

Reclaiming Congressional Authority Over War

Congress has abdicated its constitutional authority over war and foreign policy for decades. I support repealing the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force, which have been used to justify military action far beyond their original scope.

On sanctions: broad sanctions regimes punish civilian populations while failing to change regime behavior. Cuba is the clearest example — six decades of embargo with nothing to show for it but humanitarian harm. Sanctions should be targeted, time-limited, and subject to regular congressional review.

On refugees: the United States should restore and expand refugee admissions, particularly for those displaced by conflicts we helped create or perpetuate.

Invest in This Country

A trillion-dollar military budget is a statement of national priorities. It says we would rather fund bombs than hospitals, surveillance than schools, regime change than affordable housing. We need to end these wars and invest in this country — in healthcare, in housing, in the communities that are paying the price while defense contractors cash the checks.

I support reducing the Pentagon budget and redirecting those funds to:

• Medicare-for-All: Universal healthcare that costs less than what we spend now
• Affordable housing: Banning hedge funds from buying homes and investing in public housing
• Climate resilience: Clean energy infrastructure and a just transition for workers
• Education: Tuition-free public college and student debt cancellation
• Social Security expansion: Eliminating the billionaire loophole to expand benefits by $2,400 per year

Foreign policy should prioritize diplomacy, human rights, and international law — not arms sales, coups, and blank checks to allies who violate the same principles we claim to defend.

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