For 2025-2026, the U.S. military budget is $921 billion, 35.5 percent of all global military spending and 63 percent more than China’s and Russia’s military budgets combined (our largest global adversaries). And 11 of the remaining top 15 are U.S. allies!

Given the fearsomeness of our military power, U.S. citizens have a greater likelihood of starving to death or dying for lack of access to healthcare than being killed by a military attack on our homeland. And a far greater chance of being gunned down in a church, theater, school, nightclub or shopping mall by a Second Amendment nutjob!

Yet the Trump regime is planning to ask Congress to increase our already bloated military budget to $1.5 trillion for next year.

That started me thinking: What if we cut our military spending to a more reasonable amount? Let’s say that we cut it to $502.6 billion – double that of China, the next largest spender and our greatest perceived global rival. That would save U.S. taxpayers a whopping $669.7 billion. Or, when compared to the regime’s planned 2027 military budget, nearly $1 trillion!

Assuming the Trump regime hasn’t completely alienated all of our longtime allies, we would still have a combined military budget of $1.14 trillion.

So, what if our government really did come to its senses? What could we do with that $669.7 billion or $1 trillion in annual savings? And what if we made U.S. billionaires pay a tax rate of 13 percent, the same as the average U.S. taxpayer? We would gain an estimated $224 billion annually in additional tax revenues. In addition, we would gain billions more if we closed tax shelters and forced multinational corporations to pay a tax burden equal to that of other advanced economies.

With the many billions in savings and the additional tax revenue, we could all but eliminate our annual $1.78 trillion federal deficit. That would save even more money that would otherwise be spent on additional interest for our national debt. Or we could take part of the savings and do some real good for our citizens.

For example, we could feed every hungry American for $33.1 billion a year – just 3 percent of our current military budget. And for an estimated $19.9 billion – roughly 2 percent of our military budget – we could house all of our homeless, many of them military veterans.

We could further cut costs and save lives by committing to some form of universal healthcare. Some estimates show that by replacing private insurance with Medicare for All we could cut our total annual healthcare expenditure by up to $313.5 billion per year.

Reimagining our federal budget would certainly be better than following our military-industrial complex further down the rabbit hole, especially when you consider that the Department of Defense has never passed an audit. Indeed, between 1998 and 2015, the DoD can’t account for $21 trillion in spending! $21 trillion – nearly 54 percent of our national debt!!!

Moreover, by cutting our military budget to a more sensible level, the politicians in Washington might feel more constrained in committing to a war of choice.