I.

F-22 Raptor, $211 Million, Arleigh Destroyer, $1.3 Billion, Virginia class submarine,
$2.5 Billion, the average amount for a 4 year college tuition, $36,000.
a. These numbers, as per Buck Sexton of TheBlaze magazine, to the government,
and some who preside over it, they are just chump change, but to people like you

II.

and me, that last number, $36,000 can be the biggest fiscal obstacle of our lives.
Erik Kain of Forbes magazine shows us that in 2011, during the height of wars in the
middles east, and the recession, the national defense budget was $965 Billion.
a. While the national education budget was only $90 Billion.
b. These numbers, however, do not tell the full story. In our country the state and
local levels of governments pay for the majority of our public education system.
When combining the state, local, and federal spending on education, that $90
billion number rises all the way to $880 billion.
c. Now these numbers are slightly more even. Unfortunately, while the defense
budget still continues to rise, the education budget continues its shrinking.
Shrinking the most at the national level, government given Pell grants have been
steadily decreasing over the years.
d. Because of this decrease in Pell grants, many who may have become experts in
their fields are inhabited from even attending college. While those who do
become quickly succumbed into student loan debt, essentially killing some of
their futures while the money that could be used to save them, is being used to kill

III.

in other countries.
With this in mind, national defense is still one of the most important functions that
our government spends money on. With everything that is happening throughout the
Middle East and all across the globe it is good that our country feels the need to help
other countries reach an acceptable level of democracy.
a. One question is just how much to spend on defense. In this graph, provided by Liz
Dwyer of Good magazine in 2011, by combining world military expenditure in

2010, we see that the U.S. spends 42.8%, with China second at 7.3% and the
geographically largest country of Russia only spending 3.6%.
b. With such a large hold on the title of most spending, what has been productive? It
appears, almost nothing. Wanting to establish democracy throughout the Middle
East, we see a pattern that happened 50 years earlier throughout Korea and
Vietnam. A string of opposition only fueled more by malicious attacks.
c. One of the newest, expensive and controversial programs of the defense is our
drone program. Drones are unmanned aircrafts that are used to kill high value
targets in remote areas that soldiers are either unable to reach, or are simply kept
safe by using the drone. Billions of dollars have been spent on creating, flying and
maintaining drones.
d. Though we are lead to believe by many in the media that drones strikes are
extremely precise and are only carried out when it is entirely necessary and safe,
we know that by late 2014 there are of a total of 41 men who have been targeted.
31 of them were killed by the drone strikes, along with 1,147 innocent civilians.
These numbers provided by Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian Magazine in
IV.

2014.
If we truly believe that, as a country, we are here to help our neighbors across the
globe, it would be much better for not only shifting our national defense budget
towards education, but to help those in critical need throughout the world.
a. By U.N. accounts, over 1 billion people lived under the extreme poverty line, set
by the UN of $1.25 a day.
b. Even more displeasing at least over 2.2 billion people are living under $2 a day,
the extreme poverty line set by most other countries.
c. In a L.A. Times piece in 2008 it is noted that the UN states that the world hunger
issue could be solved with 30 billion a year over the next decade, mainly by
boosting agricultural productivity in the developing world.

d. This means that if we were to reduce our defense budget by only about 5% over
the next 10 years and give it to agricultural foundations, then we could help
millions of people throughout third world countries, improving their lives and
V.

changing their environments for the better.

In short, while national defense is one of the top priorities of the nation, always will
be, and always should be; by over spending on defense we are taking away resources
from other deserving areas. By educating the people of this nation, and keeping them
from spiraling into debt, or helping the people all across the globe get the food they
need to live, we can vastly improve the world we live on.

The Price of Hunger L.A. Times Magazine. L.A. Times. 23 June 2008. Web. 19 April 2015.
Dwyer, Liz. America Cares About Buying Guns, Not Educating Kids. Good Magazine. Good.
18 April 2011. Web. 19 April 2015.
Kain, Erik. Do Americans Care More About War Than Education? Forbes.com. Forbes. 17
April 2011. Web. 19 April 2015.
Sexton, Buck. Here are the Five Most Expensive Military Weapons on Earth. TheBlaze.com.
TheBlaze.13 Jan. 2012. Web. 19 April 2015.
Ackerman, Spencer. 41 Men Targeted but 1,147 People Killed: US Drone Strikes the Facts on
the Ground. TheGuardian.com. The Guardian. 24 November 2014. Web. 19 April 2015.
Millennium Goals. Un.org. U.N. 19 April 2015