Or how about KBR? The former Haliburton subsidiary got $80 million in contract bonuses to provide electrical wiring in Iraq -- wiring that has fatally electrocuted 16 soldiers and two contractors. They haven’t been defunded by Congress.

According to the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, the biggest three defense contractors -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman -- have been cited 109 times for misconduct since 1995.

Yet these contractors keep getting government contracts. The three companies pocketed $77 billion in government contracts in 2007.

Virtually every major defense contractor in this country has been engaged in systemic, fraudulent behavior, while receiving h...

Or how about KBR? The former Haliburton subsidiary got $80 million in contract bonuses to provide electrical wiring in Iraq -- wiring that has fatally electrocuted 16 soldiers and two contractors. They haven’t been defunded by Congress.

According to the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, the biggest three defense contractors -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman -- have been cited 109 times for misconduct since 1995.

Yet these contractors keep getting government contracts. The three companies pocketed $77 billion in government contracts in 2007.

Virtually every major defense contractor in this country has been engaged in systemic, fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money," said Sanders. "I wanted to expose the hypocrisy of going after an organization that helps low-income people while doing nothing about defense contractors who have received many, many billions in defense contracts and year after year, time after time, violated the law.

Said Sanders: "The right-wing echo chamber has focused on ACORN, but I say we need to take on the big guys who have been ripping off the American people to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, and in some instances, produced defective equipment that has put the lives of American servicemen at risk."