I agree with a large military budget but think if it was a third of its current budget it would actually promote more jobs. Think about how much money ends up in corporate bank accounts. The big problem with scaling it back at this point is that the biggest contractors are huge organizations that have grown wasteful trying to justify their budgets. Guess what happens if you tell Boeing that you are cutting their purchases by 50%. 10,000 civilian jobs vanish overnight. Any efficiencies added to the military need to take place over many years but it would take some real deliberate and thoughtful legislation to get there. Not some mangled bill that looks like the scene from The Fly where he's say "killll meeee." I don't know that that is possible. If it can be pulled off maybe teachers can start make medical wages. Wouldn't that be something? Even at that pay rate, I still would never be able to handle that many youths. We could subsidize solar and become truly energy independent while hiring more people to install and maintain those systems. We could provide education for most citizens. We could pay for people to stay home when they are sick! I've been in a mood all day because I was thinking about the fact that we may see people back on the moon in the next decade. It took 8 years to get there when it was a national mandate. We stopped going after awhile and now the market is finally getting there for a solution. Thats 8 vs 60 for government vs market. The free market does some things well and other things poorly. Government does some things well and some things poorly. Neither one is the solution to everything. I forgot how this started but I'll continue to rant because I'm getting pissed off how easily people get distracted about how their neighbor might be getting a better deal than them while the government has been turned into a cash cow for corporations that are established enough to get the payout. Some guy in Kentucky keeps voting for Mitch McConnell because he's worried that the woman down the street with eight kids and no husband is getting away with tax fraud by using well fare.