John,

I wanted to make sure you saw Deborah’s email yesterday about wasteful spending at the Pentagon.

You know what other federal department has never passed a clean audit? The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which houses Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from July 2024 found that, of the four agencies that were moved under DHS control:¹

“… all four agencies’ systems were found not to be in substantial compliance with the requirements of the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act (FFMIA), an indicator of whether a federal entity can produce reliable data for management and reporting purposes.”

While DHS programs meant to help immigrants have faced funding cuts and the firing of staffers―such as the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) program―the White House wants Congress to increase funding for ICE by $175 billion―while cutting funding from human needs programs like Medicaid, housing, and SNAP food aid.²

Much of this additional funding will be funneled into private prisons and detention centers that fuel mass deportations―while corporations that run these facilities rake in skyrocketing profits from human suffering.

In 2022, a private prison company named the GEO Group, saw its profits skyrocket to $1.05 billion―a 40% increase from the year before.³ A report from the National Immigrant Justice Center revealed that immigrants in privately owned detention centers face a myriad of mistreatment and abuses including punitive use of solitary confinement, lack of due process, and discriminatory treatment towards people who identify as LGBTQ.⁴

A study showed that between 2017 and 2021, 95% of deaths in ICE custody were preventable.⁵

Hundreds of millions of dollars are going towards programs that terrorize communities and rip families apart, instead of investing in health care, nutrition, and education programs that communities desperately need.

Congress needs to hear from you now to reject additional funding for the Pentagon and ICE, and fund communities instead.

Thank you for all you do,

Dominique Espinoza
Policy and Strategic Partnerships Manager, CHN Action

¹ Financial Management: Department of Homeland Security Faces Significant Financial Management Challenges
² GOP Budget Reconciliation Plan —Cutting Essential Programs To Supercharge Deportations
³ Biden vowed to reform immigration detention. Instead, private prisons benefited
⁴ Policy Brief | Snapshot of ICE Detention: Inhumane Conditions and Alarming Expansion
⁵ Deadly Failures: Preventable Deaths in U.S. Immigrant Detention

-- DEBORAH'S EMAIL --

John,

“Co-president” Elon Musk has been slashing his way through the federal government in a reckless attempt to root out what he calls “government waste.” He’s taking his chainsaw to agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), but if he was truly interested in cutting government waste, there’s one obvious place: the Pentagon.

A September 2024 report from the independent, non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that the Department of Defense is the only major federal agency that has never passed a “clean audit;” and of the 29 agencies under the Pentagon umbrella several have never passed an audit.¹

Despite years of financial mismanagement, House Republican leaders want to add at least $150 billion more to the Pentagon in the current budget fight―on top of the approximately $850 billion already allocated to the Pentagon for fiscal year 2025.²

Enough is enough. Instead of major cuts to critical human needs programs and departments like the EPA, Congress must cut Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security funding.

Send a direct message to Congress urging them to reject more money to the Pentagon and DHS and invest in communities instead.

By now, we’ve all read the reports of how federal contractors are price gouging the Pentagon, in some cases by up to 40%.³ In fact, so-called defense corporations like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrum Grumman get roughly half of the nearly $900 billion Pentagon budget every year.⁴

In fact, Pentagon contracts alone cost more than the salary of every single federal worker combined.⁵ The United States alone accounts for 40% of global military spending and spends more than the next 9 countries combined.⁶

This spending is more than any other country in the world, yet we repeatedly fail to spend the required amount of funds that meet the most basic needs of food, housing, health care, and education that our communities need.

Trillions of dollars spent―and unaccounted for―undermines our security by preventing us from investing in the shared prosperity that comes from more housing, climate and public health protections, ending hunger, improving access to care, and education. And dollar-for-dollar, Pentagon spending has been shown to create fewer jobs than jobs created in comparable sectors, including education, health care, renewable energy, or infrastructure.⁷

Send a message to Congress urging them to invest in our communities, not wasteful Pentagon spending.

Thank you for all you do,

Deborah Weinstein
Executive Director, CHN Action

¹ FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: DOD Has Identified Benefits of Financial Statement Audits and Could Expand Its Monitoring
² Republicans Advance Massive Defense Budget Boost as Pentagon Eyes 'Offsets'
³ Weapons contractors hitting Department of Defense with inflated prices for planes, submarines, missiles
⁴ Corporate Power, Profiteering, and the “Camo Economy”
⁵ Leave Federal Workers Alone. Cut Pentagon Contracts Instead.
⁶ The United States Spends More on Defense than the Next 9 Countries Combined
⁷ Pentagon Spending is the Least Effective Way to Create Jobs after COVID-19