The news is full of a purported Obama spending binge, a term coined by Romney. While spending is high, fact-checking reveals that Obama is not alone responsible for the current spending. Much of it was initiated by Bush and the Congress before Obama. I also remember that Obama was in favor of military spending cuts.

Now, of all our budget items, in my opinion, the military budget actually has room for spending cuts. Sacred cow or not, let’s take a look:

All numbers are in billion dollars. Here we can see that the United States spends more on the military than the next 14 countries combined. In fact, we have 5% of  the world’s population, but spend 41% of the world’s military dollars. The next runner-up, China, spends 8.2% of the world’s military budget, or $143 billion.

Graphically, it looks like this:

How much firepower do we need to hold off the rest of the world from coming after us?

I suggest we cut our military spending in half, saving over $350 billion a year. Now the chart looks like this:

We’re still spending 20% of the world’s military budget, and still more than 2.5 times as much as China.

Really, we can’t hold off the bad guys in the Middle East with $350 billion a year? How about we try it for just a year? Would the bad guys in Afghanistan even notice?

This is my proposal to cut spending.