John Rucosky/Tribune-Democrat via AP
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), center, views the Kongsberg Protector M151 Remote Weapons System during the 27th Annual Showcase for Commerce at the Cambria County War Memorial Arena in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, May 31, 2017.
On September 1, the House Armed Services Committee passed a military budget that includes a massive yet little-noticed giveaway to the military industry. The inclusion of the Just In Case Act would establish “special emergency authority for the Secretary of Defense to reimburse defense contractors should the Secretary of Defense deem contracted work cannot be completed due to a declared pandemic.” The measure grants the Department of Defense permanent authority to hand out reimbursements to contractors unable to work on-site because of the COVID crisis. Presented as a measure to help military companies ride out the pandemic, the provision green-lights the disbursal of large sums to major contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies Corporation, ostensibly for the purpose of preserving their workforces.
While a bailout of the defense industry advances through Congress, however, 7.5 million workers saw their expanded unemployment benefits expire on September 6. The crucial assistance vanished with no resistance from President Joe Biden, even as the delta variant rages, and millions were thrown into poverty overnight. The proposed giveaway in the annual multibillion-dollar National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to contractors was won by a pressure campaign on the part of the military industry, as well as by the leadership of representatives who receive significant funding from that industry.
The authority granted in the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) proposed 2022 NDAA, which will next move to the House floor for a vote, is similar to that in Section 3610 of the CARES Act, a $2.2 trillion pandemic relief bill passed in late March of 2020. The latter applied not just to the Department of Defense but to other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy. This CARES Act provision was criticized at the time for its mammoth giveaway to manufacturers of tankers and bombs, while so many were suffering from the COVID outbreak and its related economic upheaval. (Section 3610 is slated to expire on September 30.) But the version that was slipped into the NDAA, which is targeted at helping military contractors specifically, has gone largely unnoticed, save for reporting in industry trade publications.
Military industry trade groups lobbied aggressively for the giveaway. “This authority has been a critical lifeline for government programs and for the contractor industry during the COVID-19 emergency and has been used across government,” 11 trade organizations, including the National Defense Industrial Association and Professional Services Council, said in a letter sent to key lawmakers on August 11.
It comes as no surprise that defense contractors have celebrated HASC’s passage of the Just In Case Act as part of the NDAA. “Utilizing Section 3610’s proven and effective model to establish a permanent stand-by authority now, prior to the next emergency, is a prudent and proactive step to ensure the government is better prepared for adverse events in the future,” lauded David Broome, executive vice president for government relations at the Professional Services Council, whose member companies include three of America’s biggest weapons makers: Raytheon, the Boeing Company, and Lockheed Martin.
The Professional Services Council singled out Reps. Rob Wittman (R-VA) and Anthony Brown (D-MD) for gratitude. These congressmen first introduced the act as a stand-alone measure; they are champions of the provision. (The version that passed in the NDAA was part of a block of amendments, not a stand-alone, but the Council has still gotten what it wants.)
Both congressmen receive significant funding from the military industry. During the 2020 election cycle, Rep. Brown raised about $160,000 from the defense sector, the fourth-highest among House Democrats. During this same cycle, Rep. Wittman raised more than $250,000 from the defense sector, making him fifth-highest among House Republicans, and sixth-highest overall in the House.
From the military industry’s perspective, these donations are money well spent. “I would say Wittman and Brown are definitely boosters for the defense industry,” said Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight. “You’re talking about districts that have very large defense contractor presences.”
Members of Congress are invoking the pandemic to give more resources to a military industry that is compounding the harms of the pandemic.
These representatives do not hide their loyalties. In a press statement accompanying the initial introduction of the act, Rep. Brown said the explicit purpose of the measure is to help the military industry. “Ensuring continuity and resiliency within our broader defense workforce is essential to our national security and heading off threats to our homeland and citizens,” he said.
Yet there is reason to be concerned that the U.S. military apparatus, in fact, is worsening the pandemic, by unleashing violent interventions on countries scrambling to respond to a deadly pandemic, and by framing what is a global health crisis in narrow, nationalistic terms.
Unsurprisingly, Reps. Wittman and Brown voted in favor of a nearly $25 billion topline increase to the same NDAA that passed the HASC. This hike brings the total proposed increase over last year to nearly $38 billion, or three times the rate of inflation. Such a large proposed increase, at a time when President Biden is pledging to move away from waging “forever wars,” understandably received a great deal of critical attention. This may have allowed the Just In Case Act to slip under the radar.
Smithberger says the dearth of scrutiny is especially concerning because there is a “lack of transparency” around how past funds have been used, and an incredible amount of discretion granted to the Pentagon.
What we do know is that millions of dollars has already been handed out under Section 3610, and much more could follow. A Government Accountability Office report from July 2021 states, “Although DOD has used existing funding to reimburse $73.2 million in paid leave costs, this is a small portion of the total amount it estimates it needed to reimburse contractors’ paid leave costs.” The DOD claims that the ultimate need is much higher. “DOD’s current estimate for section 3610 paid leave costs across the defense industrial base from March 27, 2020, to September 30, 2021, is $7 billion,” the GAO report states.
The GAO report goes on to state, “DOD officials noted that section 3610 authorized, but did not appropriate, funds for reimbursements.” Smithberger says this lack of appropriations caught her attention. “For the most part, appropriators have seemed reluctant to put money behind funding this. They might have concerns about what kind of oversight there can be,” she told the Prospect.
The weapons companies that lobbied for the Just In Case Act have a direct interest in its ultimate passage. That same GAO report confirmed that weapons companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Corporation, and Raytheon had either received or requested funds from Section 3610 of the CARES Act, but did not provide details about where this money went within the companies.
According to Smithberger, the Just In Case Act is “almost certain to be included in the final version in the NDAA. This was passed in a bipartisan manner, and I don’t think there are very many people willing to pick that fight this year.”
By advancing this measure, members of Congress are invoking the pandemic to give more resources to a military industry that is compounding the harms of the pandemic. For example, bombs produced by companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, major beneficiaries of this measure, have torn a ruinous path across Yemen, contributing to the destruction of civilian neighborhoods and devastation of the country’s health system. Already besieged by famine and cholera outbreak, Yemen must also grapple with a COVID crisis while its medical system is in tatters from more than five years of U.S.-backed war. The same can be said about other countries that bear the brunt of U.S. aggression, from ongoing bombing campaigns in Iraq and Syria to drone strikes in Somalia. U.S. military interventions, armed and supplied by a vast industry, are fundamentally at odds with efforts to bolster public-health systems and fortify populations against a shared global danger.
But the measure raises deeper questions about what, in our society, is considered “essential.” The NDAA provision is premised on the assumption that we must not allow the pandemic to compromise America’s “defense industrial base,” lest we be more vulnerable to national-security threats. Yet, in the face of a real and immediate danger—homelessness and poverty—national lawmakers have allowed expanded unemployment insurance to expire, leaving millions free-falling without a net. And instead of having a national debate about what real “safety” and “security” looks like, we’re seeing politicians quietly give away public resources to the defense industry that’s lobbying and funding them.
