After the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol Building, scores of large companies told the press they would be pausing their PAC contributions or reviewing their political giving.
Some companies have since restarted their PACs, including some “pure-play contractors” that rely nearly entirely on government funding for their revenue. Quietly, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and BAE Systems, each of which received more than 85% of their 2019 revenue from government contracts, are again giving PAC contributions, including to the Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying the Electoral College results.
These companies use public funding from lucrative defense contracts to pay salaries for their executives and employees, who then provide the funding for their PACs that make donations to lawmakers in charge of appropriating the funds for their future contracts. By donating to the objectors, these PACs are routing money from taxpayers to politicians who have shown a willingness to subvert taxpayers’ rights to vote to choose their presidential electors.
Other military contractors that said they were hitting pause on their PACs after the Jan. 6 melee fired up donations again starting in April and May, including Boeing, Leidos, and Huntington Ingalls, according to their monthly FEC reports. These companies’ PACs donated to members of both parties, including GOP objectors.
In the 2020 election cycle, the PACs of Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing were the third-, fourth-, and fifth-highest donors to the GOP election objectors among around 100 large companies that planned PAC reviews, according to a CNN tally, giving a total of over $1.5 million to the 147 lawmakers. Northrop put out no press release regarding restarting its PAC and didn’t respond to Bloomberg reporters; Lockheed and Boeing gave statements to press, but also did not release any information about how they reviewed their giving policies.
The Pentagon contractors’ donations come as Congress begins taking up the annual budget-setting process in the National Defense Authorization Act. A crowded legislative calendar has meant that the process is pushed later than usual this year, with defense subcommittees expected to mark up their sections of the enormous funding bill just before August recess, and the House Armed Services Committee starting full committee markup on Sept. 1.
