They may not agree on much, but when it comes to Pentagon spending, Sen. Bernie Sanders and billionaire Elon Musk are aligned.
Sanders, who usually makes enemies of billionaires like Musk, posted on X Sunday, “Elon Musk is right. 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.”
Musk, tapped by Donald Trump to run a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy,
Sanders isn’t the only lawmaker on the left who is open to working with DOGE to reduce defense spending. Democratic Rep. Mo Khanna called out “waste, fraud and abuse” by the Department of Defense, noting its failed audits.
“When it comes to cutting waste, fraud, and abuse and opening the 5 primes to more competition, there are Democrats on [the House Armed Services Committee] who will work with @elonmusk and @DOGE,” Khanna wrote in a post on X, the platform Musk owns.
“Cool!” Musk responded to Khanna on X.
Congress has mandated that the Defense Department must pass an audit by fiscal year 2028. Last month, the department released its seventh failed audit — meaning once again it could not account for all of its spending — the Pentagon claimed it is continuing to make progress toward a clean audit by the congressional deadline.
Surprisingly, defense spending isn’t the only issue where Sanders and Musk agree. Both have shown support for making diabetes and weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy less expensive.
“From a moral perspective, does it bother you knowing that keeping the price of Ozempic and Wegovy so high in the United States could lead to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans?” Sanders, who currently chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, asked Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, CEO of Ozempic and Wegovy manufacturer Novo Nordisk, during a hearing on Capitol Hill.
A Sanders-led investigation found that while the list price for a four-week supply of Ozempic in the U.S. costs slightly less than $1,000, a four-week supply is available in other nations for less than $200. Four weeks of Wegovy in the U.S. is listed at more than $1,300 while in other nations, it costs less than $200 for the same amount of medicine.
Sanders has pointed out that generic manufacturers are able to profit from selling generic Ozempic for just $100 a month.
“Novo Nordisk, which has made nearly $50 billion in sales off of Ozempic and Wegovy, charges Americans almost $1,000 a month — the highest prices in the world. Why? Excessive corporate greed,” Sanders said.
Responding to a video of Sanders pointing out his agreement with Musk on making these drugs less expensive, Musk wrote on X, “I really am with Bernie on this one.”
Of course, this doesn’t mean Sanders and Musk are destined to be friends. Sanders has frequently criticized Musk for his vast accumulation of wealth, his millions in donations to Trump’s 2024 campaign and his acceptance of government contracts to fund SpaceX.
