"the people"...
...tend to be the recipients of corporate welfare. They're the ones who really matter at the end of the day when it comes to such decisions. The Military-Industrial Complex, of which more than a few Generals have wondered whose side they're really on, is but one facet of the stinking 'whole'.
Joe Public - Da Man-in-da-street - doesn't really figure into the equations, just the rhetoric. So long as they have "bread and Circuses" to keep them complacent, then the Powers That Be can ignore them.