An unlikely duo has emerged at the intersection of business and politics: Elon Musk and Sen. Bernie Sanders. The Vermont independent, who caucuses with the Democratic Party, on Sunday posted on X he thinks Musk has something right about the U.S. budget.
“Elon Musk is right,” Sanders said in an X post on Dec. 1. “The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions.”
While he identifies as an independent, Sanders, the 83-year-old longtime politician, is a champion of progressive politics—namely universal health care and free college education. He’s also advocated for federal budget reform for years, heavily focusing on tightening the defense budget, which is nearly $850 billion for 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Elon Musk is right.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 1, 2024
The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions.
Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud.
That must change.
Sanders supports directing federal funding instead toward “enormous crises” like climate change, health care, education, and housing, arguing “more military spending is unnecessary,” he wrote in a 2023 op-ed published by the Guardian.
Musk, on the other hand, also supports taking a look at the defense budget, but for different reasons. The Tesla CEO and X owner has gotten cozy with President-elect Donald Trump and is set to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiently (aptly abbreviated as DOGE), along with entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Representatives for Sanders and Musk did not immediately respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
Trump has said DOGE will help his administration “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies Essential to the 'Save America' Movement.”
Although the president-elect hasn’t said which specific federal spending areas DOGE will target, the new department plans to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. And Musk has been vocal about some of the DOD’s downfalls.
“Some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35,” Musk said in an X post on Nov. 24. “Manned fighter jets are outdated in the age of drones and only put pilots’ lives at risk.” These sentiments are reminiscent of Musk’s feelings toward autonomous vehicles, which he expects to be the demise of driving as we know it.
Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35 🗑️ 🫠
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2024
pic.twitter.com/4JX27qcxz1
“A lot of automotive companies or most automotive companies have not internalized this, which is surprising, because we’ve been shouting this from the rooftops for such a long time, and it will accrue to their detriment in the future,” Musk said during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call in late October, shortly after the company announced its autonomous robo-taxi, the Cybercab.
Musk also indicated in late November he wanted to investigate DOD funding after California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna suggested the defense budget could become a bipartisan issue.
“When it comes to cutting waste, fraud, and abuse and opening the 5 primes to more competition, there are Democrats on [House Armed Services Committee] who will work with @elonmusk and @DOGE,” Khanna said in an interview with CNN.
“Cool!” Musk responded to Khanna’s X post.
Cool! https://t.co/5WiVyOHAw6
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2024
Sanders is hoping for greater bipartisan cooperation on defense spending cuts in Congress, given the DOD’s repeated audit failures.
“Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud,” Sanders wrote in the X post. “That must change."
In mid-November, the DOD released a statement acknowledging the repeated audits, but Michael McCord, undersecretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Justice Department, said that “the Department has turned a corner in its understanding of the depth and breadth of its challenges.”
“Significant work remains and challenges lie ahead,” McCord said in the statement. “But our annual audit continues to be a catalyst for Department-wide financial management reform, resulting in greater financial integrity, transparency, and better-supported warfighters."
