Where Defense Spending Doesn’t Go

From Kristen Lombardi's heartrending report on the state of military schools:

The Pentagon now estimates it will take $3.7 billion and as many as seven years to renovate or rebuild most of its schools, a backlog that accumulated over the last decade as defense officials failed to press for the funds they needed in stretched military budgets.

The take-away:

The problem, [Chet Edwards, former congressman and chair of the House Appropriations Military Construction Subcommittee] says, is that military families with few resources face a “stacked deck” and must compete for budget dollars with the well-oiled lobbying machines of the military-industrial complex. “I had hundreds of representatives and lobbyists come into my office fighting for multibillion-dollar weapons programs,” he recalls. “But I only had a handful who ever walked in and said…our kids deserve better education.”