The Military-Student-Debt Complex

By Jordan Uhl, The Lever

Amid a brutal year for military recruiting, conservative war hawks are openly fretting that President Joe Biden’s announcement last week of a one-time means-tested student debt cancellation will undercut the military’s ability to prey on desperate young Americans.

“Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) tweeted shortly after the announcement.

In the six years since Banks first ran for Congress, he has taken more than $400,000 from defense contractors, weapons manufacturers, and other major players in the military industrial complex. Corporate political action committees for Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, L3Harris Technologies, and Ultra Electronics have each donated tens of thousands of dollars to Banks, according to FEC data analyzed by OpenSecrets. He now sits on the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees the Department of Defense and United States military.

Members of the committee have already collectively received more than $3.4 million from defense contractors and weapons manufacturers this election cycle.