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Despite crippling cuts to social services due to sequestration, the 2013 Defense Appropriations Bill \u2014 valued at $857 billion, including veterans\u2019 benefits and foreign military aid \u2014 was signed into law. The bill restored many of the automatic cuts called for under sequestration and permitted continued funding of several procurement projects \u2014 some of which the military explicitly said it did not want.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot keep asking the military to perform mission after mission with a sequestration and military cuts hanging over their heads,\u201d Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee,\u00a0told CNN<\/a>. \u201cWe have to take care of our own people first.\u201d Meanwhile, everything \u2014 from Medicare and Medicaid to Head Start funding to unemployment compensation \u2014 have taken a critical hit under the automatic cuts.<\/p>\n But what if, say, half of the allocated defense spending \u2014 $429 billion \u2014 was used to promote the social welfare? The United States would still have the biggest and most expensive military in the world, but it might also have full funding for the Head Start program, free college tuition for all American university students, full health insurance coverage for all uninsured American families, adequate food for every single hungry person in the U.S. and a raise in the federal minimum wage to $11 per hour \u2014 subsidized in full by the federal government.<\/p>\n
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