At his recent Town Hall, Representative Buchanan was asked about his position on funding the $54 billion increase to the Defense Department budget proposed by President Trump.                      
The Pentagon acknowledges it cannot account for billions of dollars in expenditures. Instead of increasing the military budget, the Pentagon needs to figure out how to account for the billions it spends already and how to use the money more effectively.                                                        
While it pushes to increase expenditures for a spendthrift Pentagon, the Trump Administration proposes cutting expenditures for diplomacy and foreign aid. Does this make sense? We need more smart power, not more waste and ineffective defense spending.
Congress and the Trump Administration don’t listen to the generals’ best advice as evidenced by the Administration’s proposed cuts for foreign aid and diplomacy. Smart power is cheaper and more effective. General Mattis said, “…if you don’t fund the State Department fully then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately. So I think it’s a cost-benefit ratio.”                                            
Our brave troops are being killed and wounded and their bloodshed and our lost treasure can never be recovered.                                                                                                                                                   
As President Eisenhower stated, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”                                          
Let’s be smarter.                                                                                                                                                          
Gene Jones
President, Florida Veterans for Common Sense, Inc.

The letter as published in the Sarasota Herald Tribune can be found at: http://www.heraldtribune.com/opinion/20170320/tuesdays-letters