The deal worked out to allow a rise in the debt ceiling gives us our first real chance in more than a decade to make significant cuts to our country’s out-of-control war budget, but we are going to have to fight for them. The war industry is already deploying their favorite kind of stealth weapon on Capitol Hill to protect their profits: money and influence. Members of the newly-announced deficit committee have together taken millions in campaign and PAC contributions from military contractors since 2007, and these companies plan to “cash in” on these donations to stop real cuts to big war contracts. That’s why Brave New Foundation is moving quickly to launch a new campaign, War Costs, to counter their profit-protection strategy, and we need you with us.

The first way the war industry is working to influence the politics of the debt ceiling debate is through the mainstream media. Since the outlines of the debt ceiling deal were announced, various proxies for military contractor companies have been screaming in the media about the supposed dangers of modest cuts to our outrageously excessive war spending trillions over a 10-year period. These folks are not exactly impartial. In fact, the pundits given the most prominent billing in the press have deep ties to the war industry, and they need to be exposed. For example:

• The Washington Post quoted a man named Michael S. Lewis, who said that the cuts to the war budget “would have dire consequences.” The Post identified him as “an industry analyst with Lazard Capital Markets.” The Post failed to mention, however, that Lewis is a member of the National Defense Industrial Association, which bills itself as “America’s leading defense industry association” which aims to make its war corporation members and their products “more marketable.”
• In another story, the Post quoted Marion C. Blakey, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, saying that the deficit deal “dangles a Sword of Damocles over our national security.” Of course, the Aerospace Industries Association’s executive committee is filled with people like the president and CEO of Boeing, the president and CEO of Northrup Grummon, of General Dynamics, Textron, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon…you get the picture. Blakey’s bosses aren’t exactly disinterested parties who look to him to make dispassionate public statements about defense spending.