Who are we fighting? Eisenhower warned us about this 60 years ago. The leech of the military-industrial complex has been sapping resources from the American people for too long. Please Congress, Vote NO on this enormous budget and spend more on the American people.

A strong military is certainly important for national security, but when we outspend the next top military’s combined at the expense of our own people’s education and basic utilities it becomes excessive. If this were purely a discussion about national security we would be discussing protecting our elections from foreign influence, protecting the Mueller investigation, supporting our allies, retaliation against Russia and impeachment of the President of the United States.

We have always poured vast sums of money into so-called defense while increasingly now ignoring real and urgent needs of our people and our planet. The military parade is another ploy of a wannabe fascist dictator who has filled the Cabinet with warmongers, the majority of whom have never seen war, nor lost a child to war. While we deny refugees with unimaginable suffering sanctuary to our country, we line the pockets of the arms dealers, support immoral wars, oppression of suffering people, and wave the flag calling that patriotism. Patriotism is taking care of our military, our farmers, all our people, not oppressing everyone for the increased wealth of the few. Our real risk is the wannabe dictator in the White House who is packing the Court with idealogues to destroy our freedom. Would an enemy country like Russia perhaps want to install #45 to create precisely this chaos and devastation of people and the environment from within?

The Pentagon, until just recently, has NEVER been audited. The indication is that there is in excess of $20 TRILLION dollars over he last two decades that has gone unaccounted for. That alone would be enough to question the need for channeling another $700 B into defense. We have on the order of 8oo military outposts in over 120 countries worldwide... Why? To what end? How do we rationalize this kind of profligacy when our infrastructure at home is is serious decline?... income inequality is the most stark and unbalanced sine the 1930s.... Our Veterans are being poorly served at home.... We have yet to provide an adequate and suitable health-care system for ALL of our people..... Our public education is chronically strapped for funding. But somehow we can still find $705 B to pump up the DoD, (and let's call it by a more appropriate name...Department of War)? How much of this expense ends up in the pocket of MIC CEOs, gaming the budget and sandbagging their invoices? Might it be enough to pay our troops better than we do? Or maybe we could actually address some of our domestic issues rather than a new system of robotic killing machines? Who are we?.... What have we become when this is our priority for our budget?

I'll let Dwight D. Eisenhower summarize my opinion: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. . . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

This is overspending we do not need. By creating huge debts and deficits, you undermine the very national security you purport to protect with this inflated and unnecessary defense spending. Get your fiscal house in order before you wreck it all. Thank you.

UNLESS YOU REPEAL THE TOTALLY UNNECESSARY TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH AND BIG BUSINESS, WE CANNOT AFFORD THIS! DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT CUTTING SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE, FOR WHICH WE PAY, OR CHIP OR MEDICAID OR FOOD STAMPS! YOU ARE NOT BUYING BIG EXPENSIVE MILITARY TOYS BY LETTING OUR CHILDREN AND OLD PEOPLE AND POOR PEOPLE GO HUNGRY AND SICK!

$708 BILLION!!!! How about carving out a few billion to pay back the money “borrowed from “ Social Security and Medicare. How about funding Medicare for all? Who is making money on this $708 BILLION?

Unless funding is taken out of the bill for trumps ego building parade. The military is not this 5x draft dodging coward to play with like some dictator. Btw in the matter of shear kill power we are number one, number of ships no but super carriers we have almost double of other countries. There is no need for that much Defence spending. TheGOP is trying to compensate for the lack of you know what. That money would be better spent on infrastructure and our failing power grid.

By spending too much money on defense we are stealing from social programs. We need to cut the Pentagon's budget, even though they and the defense companies have powerful lobbies. We could spend some of the money saved on educating people who work in defense jobs. "Does the number of warships we have, and are building, really put America at risk, when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined — 11 of which are our partners and allies? Is it a dire threat that by 2020, the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?" ― US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

The military parade should be cancelled. Trump does not deserve an expensive, or even a cheap, military parade. And the wealthy should be REQUIRED to pay their FAIR share of military spending. And we must NOT cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP and other financing to aid the poorer citizens.

Whose priorities are these? Not mine!

The military should be put on a very tight rein until The Pentagon accounts for the trillions it mislaid. There needs to be more accountability. There is also something obviously wrong when we outspend the total expenditure of the next 12 countries

The spending on defense is getting absurd.

Please for the future of the country put this money into education... our children are suffering, and they’re over-tested and under-supported. As a teacher it breaks my heart every day.

Full audit. No more till they start accounting for it all. All you are doing is putting money in the pockets of the defense contractors deep pockets.

We are being overtaken by the military industrial