Elizabeth Warren wants defense contractors to stop buying back their own stock. She got it into the National Defense Authorization Act. Business groups hate it. They're declaring war on the provision.
Declaring war. On a Pentagon spending bill. The irony meter just filed for bankruptcy.
Defense contractors take taxpayer money, build missiles, then use the profits to juice their stock price instead of investing in capacity or worker training or literally anything else. Warren said no more of that if you want the big contracts. Business lobbies responded by threatening to tank the whole defense bill. Because nothing says "we support the troops" like holding military funding hostage so Lockheed can keep doing financial engineering.
The provision passed on a bipartisan basis, which means even Republicans looked at the buyback numbers and thought maybe we shouldn't let Raytheon turn the defense budget into a personal ATM. That's how bad it got. When both parties agree on limiting corporate financial shenanigans, you know the grift reached escape velocity.
Business groups call it government overreach. They prefer the term "shareholder value maximization," which is what you say when "looting" sounds too honest. The restrictions would apply to companies getting major defense contracts. They could still pay dividends and buy back stock. Just not as much. Just not while simultaneously begging Congress for more money because they can't meet production targets.
Retail traders already started panic-selling defense stocks they bought after watching Top Gun three times. They thought defense contractors were a safe play. Turns out the business model was "get paid by taxpayers, return cash to executives, repeat until Senate notices." Now the Senate noticed.
The bill moves forward. Business lobbies will spend millions fighting a provision that might cost their members billions. They'll call it free market principles. Everyone else will call it Tuesday.
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