A combined Democrat and Republican deal to extend assistance to long term unemployed Americans now goes to the House of Representatives. Its cost is roughly one percent [1%] of our defense budget. Passing this legislation is a total no brainer.

We all know that massive cost over-runs and massively wasteful fraud losses consistently occur in our defense budget, while millions of Americans seek jobs in our highly automated economy. Denying one in ten American workers assistance to reintegrate themselves into our economy, while we support a defense budget larger than the next fifteen nations of the world, is an illogical and destructive policy.

The $10 billion dollars this bill will cost is about recovering the lives of our own citizens. Many – if not most – of them were working before the 2008 international recession occurred: a recession created by wealthy American financial interests, who perpetrated a mortgage scheme that rocked the world’s economy. These financial interests also own much stock in defense manufacturing.

In my book anyone denying this help to unemployed, claiming they are all simply lazy bums who want welfare assistance, needs psychological counseling. Our nearest military competitor is China, whose defense budget is $100 billion versus our $600 billion. Russia spends only $50 billion. We do not endanger our defense by cutting its cost and aiding unemployed Americans. I believe anyone who says we do is weak in math, or paranoid. Or both.