It is a sad portrayal of our principles as a people, that we put the destruction of other nations above the wellbeing of our own.
It is abhorrently outrageous that defense spending in the United States in the 2017 fiscal year, accounts for 49 percent of all national discretionary spending, totaling up to $535 billion According to inside.gov. Whereas education accounts for 8 percent, Social Security unemployment and labor accounts for 6 percent, as does veteran benefits. That is abhorrently outrageous.
The trademark of any great civilization is the manner in which it safeguards the less fortunate of its own society. So what does it say about the state of the Union when in the year 2015, Reuters reported that there was more than 500,000 homeless individuals residing in the U.S. without shelter, with one-fourth of them being under the age of 18.
We spend more money, in the quantities of hundreds of billions, knocking homes down abroad as opposed to building homes in the homeland.
Naturally, something such as this would strike us as an obvious perversion of the standards of humanity that we are expected to fulfill. However, this perversion is not so obvious to our lawmakers on the Hill.
Late last year, the U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a spending bill that increases the defense spending budget in the 2018 fiscal year to $700 billion. After the bill went through the conference committee process with the House, who passed their version of the bill earlier. It went to Donald Trump’s desk, who was likely tickled pink that it was $600 million more than even he requested.
It is bewildering why our lawmakers believe that it is more important to designate increased funding to the sharpening of swords within the country, rather than the minds.
Education is the cornerstone of a well-established republic.Therefore, an educated populace is essential to the retention of democracy. So what does it say about the land of the free when collectively our students are chained down to $1.3 trillion in student debt, and what does it say about the fact that a majority of our nation has not attained a college education, as reported by PBS.
Last year, the junior senator from Vermont and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, proposed the College for All Act. The legislation would remove tuition costs of four-year colleges for individuals coming from households that make $125,000 or less, and it would make community college tuition free regardless of income level. Sanders projects that the cost of this legislation would be approximately $70 billion, two-thirds of that cost would be covered by the federal government. As it stands, the Senate bill only has seven co-sponsors.
As mentioned before, defense spending accounts for 49 percent of discretionary spending compared to 8 percent towards education. It is astonishing that our lawmakers are able to justify a $165 billion increase to defense spending, but is unable to spare $47 billion for furthering the education of its own people.
In his last State of the Union Address, former President Barrack Obama said “The United States is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period… We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.”
With that considered, we can conclude that we do not need any additional funds going to defense spending. We need to recall that standing with our troops does not always mean providing more arms, sometimes it means advancing the wellbeing and principles of our people domestically. The principles that the military are sworn to protect.
If you agree, that our lawmakers on the hill should spend less on the destruction of other countries, and more on the education of our own, the representative for San Marcos and the 50th California district is Duncan Hunter. His office number is (202) 225-5672, give him a call to tell him what you think.
