The army says it doesn’t need new Abrams tanks, but Congress is buying them anyway. What more proof would one need that the political system is corrupt, that it is broken, that it is not responding to the needs of the American people, that we have pervasive corporate welfare?
Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.
But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, “No thanks.”
It’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.
Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.
It’s not all of Congress that is doing this, it’s just the Republicans. They are what’s broken. They are the problem. Of course, we’ve known this for many years, but now even conservative political scholars like Norman Ornstein & Thomas Mann are saying it — http://billmoyers.com/segment/norman-ornstein-and-thomas-mann-explain-why-congress-is-failing-us/.
Too many Dems are voting against the People and upholding the abusive power of big corporations who provide them cash in return. We saw this with the firearms background check legislation. Therefore, I can not use Republican as a proxy for corrupt. I’ll agree with you, though, that the Republicans have more likelihood than the Dems to vote for big companies that hand them lots of cash.