Argument Paper on Military Spending

Essay by dukrbukCollege, Undergraduate November 2004

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Our current military spending is a mere 3.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product; this percentage is down from 6 percent in the Regan administration and from 8.9 percent during the height of Vietnam war (Brown par 4). Loren Tompson, a defense analyst, once remarked, AIt takes a lot of inducements to get people to risk their lives for a living@ (qtd. in Sorrells par 14). Increased military spending is essential to keep our society thriving. More counter terrorism training for the new kind of war is needed (Sorrells par 38). A smaller, quicker and more lethal military power that uses state of the art communications and weapons is the goal (Sorrells par 38). Increasing the military=s budget would justify the cuts it has recently taken. Defense spending since the end of the Cold War, has fallen 40 percent (Kilian par 12). An increase in the military=s budget is needed to cover the costs of personnel, weapons and more troops (Brown par 6).

A 500 billion dollar increase has been spoken of to pay for additional troops, modern weapons and the rising costs of maintaining military personnel (Sorrells par 8).

Some would argue that the United States is allocating too much for the military and not enough on home land expenditures. Eric Weltman, a Cambridge writer said that Awe=re spending billions of dollars to protect our country militarily, but not spending the money necessary to protect our communities in other ways.@ Even though the Cold War ended decades ago its weapon programs are still being funded in the current military budget (Brown par 14). An additional 5.7 billion dollars would provide a million families with federal housing assistance (Weltman par 2). The Head Start program need 7 billion dollars to stay current (Weltman par 2). School systems need 112...