Pentagon Used Funds For Masks & Swabs On Jet Engines & Body Armor

The Pentagon stole $1 billion dollars from COVID-19 response to fund their favorite defense contractors on various projects at a time when the Department of Defense already has an all-time record high budget.

A $1 billion fund Congress gave the Pentagon in March to build up the country’s supplies of medical equipment has instead been mostly funneled to defense contractors and used to make things such as jet engine parts, body armor and dress uniforms.

The Cares Act, which Congress passed earlier this year, gave the Pentagon money to “prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.” But a few weeks later, the Defense Department began reshaping how it would award the money....diverted toward patching up long-standing perceived gaps in military supplies.

The money for PPE allocated to our Department of Defense was hijacked for more military hardware.

....the blizzard of bailout cash was — in some cases — redirected to firms that weren’t originally targeted for assistance. It also shows how difficult it has been for officials to track how money is spent and — in the case of Congress — intervene when changes are made.

The Trump administration has done little to limit the defense firms from accessing multiple bailout funds at once and is not requiring the companies to refrain from layoffs as a condition of receiving the awards.

Some defense contractors received the Pentagon money even though they had already dipped into another pot of bailout funding, the Paycheck Protection Program.

We have found your looters right here: the Republican leadership of the Defense Department.

... the Pentagon... decided to give defense contractors hundreds of millions of dollars from the fund, mostly for projects that have little to do with the coronavirus response. Defense Department lawyers quickly determined that the money could be used for defense production, a conclusion that Congress later disputed.

Among the awards: $183 million to firms including Rolls-Royce and ArcelorMittal to maintain the shipbuilding industry; tens of millions of dollars for satellite, drone and space surveillance technology; $80 million to a Kansas aircraft parts business suffering from the Boeing 737 Max grounding and the global slowdown in air travel; and $2 million for a domestic manufacturer of Army dress uniform fabric.

After the Washington Post reported the funding changes in an online article Tuesday, two House Democrats called for an investigation and public hearings on the matter, questioning the legality of how the money was used and calling it “unacceptable."

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/22/covid-funds-pentagon/