The budget is "astronomically high" because of, ECONOMY...it's hard to see, but each dollar spent generates 8-16 dollars as it passes from hand to hand to hand. So the numbers, are moot as they seem like we're just buying bullets and bombs when the reality is we get more bang for our buck (pun intended) than simple numbers show. Military Spending is an Economy in the US. It's an Industry. Meaning a great, many people are employed by and rely on the Military Industrial Complex. Much, maybe even the bulk of our military spending has absolutely nothing to do with so-called "enemies". Entire Towns and cities in the US are dedicated to the production/maintenance of Military Assets. Randomly selecting a city/town, I select Cheyenne Wyoming a city that produces, next to nothing. Aside from a clothing store with an online presence and dwindling railroad commerce, the city relies on big gov't to provide funds. The Air Force Base there (FE WARREN) has no runway. This is an ICBM Base. The sole purpose of such a base is to Maintain the ICBMs. Aside from the US, no Nation currently exists that could withstand the incredible power of one, lone Peacekeeper Missile (let alone hundreds of Minutemen). The next biggest spender, China, could spend it's entire GDP, to prepare for a war, and it'd be still be beyond hopeless. Just 5 Peacekeepers would be upwards of 55-60 nukes. We have thousands of nukes. There simply is no contest. Besides, China is our Economic ally and will be for observable future. We don't go to war with our economic allies. We go to war with folks that say "no" to US, but I digress... Back to Cheyenne and FE WARREN, should this base close...Cheyenne will go bankrupt and collapse. As would many other cities and towns across the US that are in the same boat...much like with Detroit and the collapse of the Auto [b]Industry [/b](there's that "industry" word again). Many towns get lots of tax monies and salaries from companies like Lockheed and Northrop Grumman. Their Chamber of Commerce woo these companies to set up shop in the town, the Senators ensure these towns and companies get a piece of the industry pie. For a city like Cheyenne, loosing the funding provided by a military base would mean LESS people eating at a local restaurant, that means less waitresses, less cooks, less food deliveries, less health inspectors, less tables sold, less chairs sold, less plumbing calls, less advertising, and less tax revenue. See in an ECONOMY, that dollar the AIRMAN would spend at that restaurant trickles down into all of those other areas. That dollar, pays the cook, who buys a shirt. The store he brought the shirt at, uses that dollar to pay the roofer to fix the roof. That roofer uses that dollar to get his truck fixed and it goes on and on and on. So we get more, out of our military budget than more ways to kill people. A lot more. Same with the Prison Industrial Complex. Is it Racist? Certainly. But how do you make meaningful and moral changes, without bankrupting or devastating an economy that relies on an amoral industry? Well, you begin to diversify the economy of that town or city. Cheyenne is becoming a leader in Wind Technologies for example....they've got schools up and running..which will begin to attract more and more businesses to take part in this new industry. Similar changes need to take place to even begin to address the problems and moral woes of the prison industry. You can't just release 3.5 out of 5 people because they shouldn't have been sentenced to such long terms anyway. Such a reduction in inmates would probably bankrupt any company that creates prison uniforms for example. At the very least, a large amount of staff would be fired. Same goes for the prison transport companies, and the company that makes shackles, and the companies that build prisons, as well as the companies that provide the concrete for the builders...all the way down to the child care provider so that the people that work at the jail can go to work. As to why it keeps going up, well that's just good business. Profits go up, not down. Apple made like $4 Billion in profits like a few years ago...the NEXT year it did only $3 Billion in profits, investors were pissed, Wall Street Journal was all, saying that if Steve Jobs hadn't died blah blah blah...Apple stock went down. So that's why we keep spending more and more and more and will continue to do so.