The waiter puts your plate of food on the table, and you comment that there’s no vegetable. He hands you a bottle of ketchup and says, “Here’s your vegetable,” and walks away.<\/p>\n
Sound ludicrous? That was the opening salvo fired by Ronald Reagan in his war on the underprivileged and disadvantaged in his inaugural year as President in 1981. To save money on those wasteful school lunch programs for the needy, Reagan and his budget director, David Stockman, suggested ketchup be considered a vegetable rather than a condiment. While roundly ridiculed and unsuccessful, this wasn’t Reagan’s last assault on the impoverished, just his first.<\/p>\n
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When he took office in 1981, military expenditures totaled $170 billion, but by the time he left it had doubled to $340 billion. As he doubled the military budget, Reagan cut funding to state and local governments by more than 60% during his eight years<\/a> and greatly diminished social welfare programs. Even that is dwarfed by the American governments current spending, with actual 2009 defense expenditures at $780 billion, and projected defense spending for 2010 at $790 billion. Expenditures on current military and military pensions exceeds of 50% of the federal budget.<\/p>\n In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired five-star general and a two-term President, warned the American people about the expanding influence of what he termed the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address to the nation. <\/p>\n