Anyone watching any major news organization during Operation: Iraqi Freedom will know that the United States has a lot of manpower and a lot of equipment. What the American people might not know is the large amount of money it takes to run our military. In fact, it is in the agenda of President Bush to provide 2.1 trillion dollars to the defense department over the next five years. This amount of spending will lead us into deficit spending for the first time in four years. A bumper sticker shows the feelings of many: "It"ll be a good day when schools have all the money they need and the Air Force needs to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." Clearly all of this money will come from taxing the hardworking citizens of this country, who in the past few years have finally been able to earn and spend enough money to get the country out of deficit spending.
With all of this money being spent on the military, many people stop and wonder why this money isn't being spent a little closer to home where we have problems of homelessness in our cities and millions live without health insurance. Many more people see breast cancer or AIDS as a larger problem then some skirmish going on in a remote part of Africa. At first glance it appears that we are more concerned with the wellbeing of other nations than we are of our own. But what would happen if we petitioned our congressmen and asked them to cut military spending; would things improve?.
The answer would surprisingly be no! What many people do not consider is how much of a role the department of defense plays in the lives of our families and the ones we love. For example, millions of high school graduates look to the military as a way to get their life started. By serving their country military members are given a place to sleep, food to eat, a steady income, health insurance, and most importantly, skills for life. Without the military for high school graduates to enroll in there would be an uncontrollable problem of young people in need as their aren't enough colleges in the country to educate an extra few million students a year, and that is presuming that the student could afford the ever rising price tag.
