The American Defense budget is excessive

I whole-heartedly believe that the american defense budget is out of line and needs a severe cutback. Contention 1: Imbalance of priorities in the american budget Perhaps the biggest problem with the american budget is that it creates an unjustifiable imbalance of priorities. A Quick scan of the 2017 American budget (http://federal-budget.insidegov.com...) will demonstrate my point. The defense portion of the budget will receive a considerable total of 543 billion dollars. To put that into a greater context, Education, employment and training services COMBINED are only receiving 94 billion. Do you not think it is more worthy to provide quality education and employ the 1.6 million Americans out of work (https://data.bls.gov...). Veterans are only receiving 159 billions and that is still not enough because we see unemployed and homeless veterans like this (https://media.licdn.com...) all the time (http://www.newsmax.com...). The Hundreds of billions of dollars used to recruit soldiers should be used to care about the returning soldiers who deserve our honor and respect and not living in the streets. Transportation services receive the tiny sliver out of the budget of 88 billion, a mere less than a fifth of the defense budget . Do you not think it would be a better investment to fix and renovate the rat-infested and filthy underground subway systems of major american cities like this (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...) (http://cdn.newsday.com...) (http://nycsubway.org.s3.amazonaws.com...) instead of going to bomb another city or kill another child in syria or Iraq? Other programs like housing and police services and firefighting services receive 63 billion dollars COMBINED. This is TEN TIMES smaller than the national defense budget. Do you not think it would be a better investment to fix the almost third-world like cities in america (http://www.wnd.com...) than to go and attack third world countries in the middle east? Is it not ironic that the US claims to improve the middle east and lift it out of its third-world country status but in the process of doing so has neglected its own cities that ended up being third world like (Chicago, detroit, etc.) Do you not think that keeping peace in your own country is more worthy thvn keeping peace in other country? Why send soldiers to keep peace in other countries when cities in your own country has cities with a 2,000 / 100,000 murder rate (https://www.forbes.com...)? Do you not think it is a better investment to bring police forces to those war-torn cities than to send troops to other war-torn countries? Just look at the condition of some of your country's cities (http://media.gettyimages.com...) ( https://lebbeuswoods.files.wordpress.com...) (http://craigswilson.com...) (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...) Your country should be spending its money on better stuff than war. Your country should fix itself before it goes to fix others. Contention 2: Budget Deficits + Cost of interest Your country can not afford to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in national defense due to the simple fact that the US is currently in 17 trillion dollars of debt. The estimated deficit for this budget is 443 billion dollars (http://federal-budget.insidegov.com...). Do you really think it is reasonable to place your country in more debt than 17 trillion dollars and to increase this number by 443 billion dollars each year just because you would like to maintain the largest army in the world that is not used for anything now other than bomb children in Syria? The truth is my friend your country is spending 267 billion every year to pay interest on current loans and it has not even dug into the principal yet meaning that your government will be burning 267 billion every year because of its debt. Do you really want to increase the amount of money burned on interest? If the US cut its military budget in half and paid this towards your country's principal, it could pay all its debt in 60 years. Think about that if you cut the country's military budget in half, you can get rid of all the 17 trillion dollars in debt america has and save yourself 200 billion dollars PER YEAR to spend on important things like science, education or nasa. The bottom line is your country is paying 543 billion dollars to defense every year but your country's debt is 17 trillion dollars (which means your country can not afford it) and if you keep spending that much money on the military, you will keep increasing the debt because of a 443 billion dollar annual deficit. Keeping the military budget as it is right now will result in your country burning more than 300 billion dollars in interest every year. If this trend continues, you will reach a point where your government will be burning as much money in interest as it pays for its national defense. Your country's government is like the average american who is running a deficit (443 billion dollars every year) and has massive amounts of debt (17 trillion dollars) but irresponsibly wants to buy a new speedo-boat every year ( 543 billion dollars a year). Contention 3: Not needed (Nato) The cornerstone of my case is the fact that your country does not even need to spend that much on its military because Pax-Americana is over. Pax-Americana was a period of relative military tensions after WW2 because no country was thinking it would be safe of invasion from a foreigner (especially after the Nazis took over most of Europe during WW2). There was no "global police" during that time back then so the americans gratefully took on itself this role of maintaining world peace (relatively). The thing is with the rise of military alliances in the west like nato, the americans do not need to spend that much money on maintaining a large military anymore. Now the US does not have to serve the role of the global police since the nato fills that role. Nowadays, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Canada, Scandinavia, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Germany, etc. (and the US) all act as the world police and maintain world peace with the signing of Nato. The US is no longer needed to be the world police or to maintain world peace because Nato can do so much better and much much more efficiently. The US no longer needs a gigantic military and a huge Defense budget because as of now the Nato oversees world peace. In fact the US does not need a huge military to protect itself either because under nato (which the US is part of) "an attack on one is an attack on all", so in case the US gets attacked, Nato can pretty much go in and push out all the invading or attacking forces. Please be noted that I do not support that the US army should be dissolved or that the defense budget should be down to 0. I support the idea that the defense budget should be drastically cutback as well as the size of the military of america.