To: The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate

Congress: In the spirit of Dr. King, Slash the military budget.

Martin Luther King realized that only by deeply cutting the military budget can we fund health care, education, job development, infrastructure, care of the earth and more. In MLK's spirit, we demand that you drastically cut the military budget for this year, increasing funds directed toward human needs. You will be rewarded at the ballet box.

Why is this important?

I was in my twenties during the Vietnam War. When that conflict and the Cold War were at last over, Americans thought (wrongly) that the need for a bloated military budget was over as well. Dr. King understood how our spending on war went hand in hand with increased poverty and greater racism in the US, and opposed the war in Vietnam.

A proposed budget of 600-700 billion dollars has been offered to the Military in 2018. Cuts have meanwhile been proposed for Departments of Energy, Education, the Interior, EPA and Health and Human Services, some at close to one-third of their current budget (See Wikipedia, 2018 Federal Budget, for details).

If instead of cutting these agencies, we instead cut the Military by one-half, we could approximately DOUBLE the proposed budgets for these essential services. We have already committed 5-7 trillion dollars to wars in the Middle East (as a candidate, Trump condemned the estimated 6 trillion spent, and we must stop. We demand that the Congress truly act in service of the American people.