Starting off a new interview with Ron Paul at the Wall Street for Main Street show, host Jason Burack asked Paul, who served in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican from Texas and ran three times for US president promoting a noninterventionist foreign policy, about the extent of influence in favor of militarism in Washington, DC.
Burack queries: “How much influence does the Pentagon and the military-industrial-and-information complex have over Congress, both political parties, whoever is US president, and the bureaucracy here in the DC metro area?” In response, Paul comments:
Well, it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest. And there’s a good reason for that. It’s because they have the biggest budget for one individual group of people.
Paul continues that the support for the military-industrial complex is “very bipartisan” even though Democrats have some reputation for being less supportive of starting wars. As an example, Paul mentions Bernie Sanders, the independent US Senator from Vermont who is seeking the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Paul comments, “if some weaponry is being built in Vermont, he was able to support this.”
For some more information related to Paul’s comment concerning Sanders, check out Daniel Bukszpan’s July of 2016 CNBC article that examines Sanders’ support for the F-35 aircraft.
Listen to Paul’s complete interview here.
In Paul’s interview, Burack mentions that Paul’s Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity will soon be holding a conference in the heart of the military-industrial complex near Washington, DC. The conference titled “Breaking Washington’s Addiction to War” will take place Saturday, August 24 near the Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia.
Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.