Dear Madame/Mr. President:

Throughout time, countries and nations have fought for their freedoms, whether it be with voice, or by war. In this fairly peaceful time, compared to generations past, we still pour a large amount of our funding into the military. While we put this money into our military, we neglect to ensure other programs receive the funding they need to run effectively and efficiently. I believe that for the benefit for the U.S. people, a change needs to be made to how much we pour into military force, and is why it should be a focus while you are in office.

With the amount we put into our military, we ensure a safe and sound population; however, the budget of our military dwarfs other major countries budgets by over two times the amount, including both China and Russia, even with China having a larger population than that of the U.S.

In 2015, China’s budget was estimated at $215 billion dollars, Russia’s was projected at $66.4 billion, while the U.S. budget was projected at $596 billion, all by the SIPRI in 2015. China, being the country with the second highest military spending, is spending less than half of what the U.S. is.

With military being a discretionary budget, it has a large range on how much can be put into it, but also has to balance alongside other budgets in the same category. In 2015, the military budget had taken up over 50% of this budget, with the next highest being government and education and just over 6% each. If the military is looking to continually make sure they can improve and reduce costs further for their operations, wouldn’t higher funding to improve and foster education help to make sure we have the minds capable to develop these technologies to truly have the ability to make sure we truly have the best?

While the safety of the people is a necessary for spending, and with the amount being lowered for the fiscal year of 2016 being $585 billion, I see a small push for some change. With how the DoD has laid out the budget of 2016, it appears that there is a series of plans to lower expenses further. However, with the size of the funding change, at just a projected $11 billion dollars, I see no major change in the near future.

To benefit our people and improve other programs and budgets, we need to lower our budget. I believe to effectively change the budgeting to a point that will effectively benefit the country we need to realize how many allies we have, look towards the opportunities for advancement in and through education, and researching cost-effective materials for military use. We can’t always expect to have the military prowess we have now, unless we ensure that education is improved. Finally, we should move some of the funding already in the military to the research of better, cost-effective materials. I truly believe that if you help put forth the effort to make these changes, the American people will benefit, the military can further improve overtime after an initial cut, and other budgets can benefit from a cut of the military budget.

Sincerely,

Connor