How the Defense Budget Hurts Americans Most

It was what President Dwight David Eisenhower warned about just before he left office in 1961. Since Eisenhower's time it has been taking up the biggest chunk by far of the federal budget in terms of total expenditures. It is of course the defense budget. The average American would be surprised to know exactly how much of their tax dollars really go to the military industrial complex and in turn what a price the nation as a whole pays in terms of other under funded areas of the budget that are just as vital and how the average American suffers because of it.
According to the Government Accounting Office it is projected that for fiscal year 2008 the federal Government will take in about 2 trillion 400 billion dollars in total tax revenues. Half of that will go to defense or defense related spending either through procurement and or research and development. This leaves half of the federal budget for everything else that the government has to finance.
Under President Bush the defense budget has shot up to record highs. In order to sustain this increase the budgets of other vital services have had to be cut. Here are a few examples:

1. Health care -- Almost 60 million people in the United States have no health care and the Bush Administration has done little to change this. In addition to no universal health care initiatives it has also continued to under fund the nations public hospitals and has sought to drastically cut programs like Medicare and Medicaid which forces groups like seniors to choose between buying food or paying for medicines due to their lack of economic resourses.

2. Public works -- Less money for projects such as rebuilding the destroyed levees in New Orleans to the strength that they need to be in order to resist another Katrina so that hundreds perhaps would be saved and thousands of homes would be undamaged.

3. Education -- Less money for education in order to finance the changes that need to be made to make our public schools true centers of learning and not the laughing stock dropout factories that they are today who push kids out into society prepared and equipped to do nothing.

4. Infrastructure -- No money to build and maintain bridges and roads so you can expect more of them to colapse and deteriorate which of course means that you will among other things have to take your car into the shop more often for repairs because of the beating it takes driving on all those beaten up pot hole filled streets that are not quickly repaired which can cost you thousands of dollars over time in addition to the general danger that a poorly kept infrastructure poses to the public.

Then we can all sit in front of our televisions and watch the members of the House (some of whom have been serving in the House and Senate for 20 and 30 years) talk about how these services and programs cannot be financed because there is not enough money in the budget just before they vote themselves another pay raise in the middle of the night and they continue to do everything possible to maintain the status quo as they have for decades.
The United States is spending exponentially more money on defense than most of the other countries of the world combined. The way we pay for it as a people is with a never ending health care crisis, a public education system that is an international joke, a neglected and crumbling infrastructure, and a national debt that in the near future may top 10 trillion dollars.
It is time for some sanity to prevail. We have to get the defense budget under control in order to address some of the other pressing issues that are eating away at the future prosperity and stability of our country. We cannot carry on as we have. We cannot afford to. The military industrial complex has been damaging the lives of more Americans than those of any enemy this nation has ever faced. It is in many ways an enemy from within.