The Constitution only specifies defense. It says nothing about offensive spending. We can no longer afford to spend 7 times what the next biggest spender spends.
I've no problem with defense spending twice what the next biggest spender spends, like we used to until Reagan exploded our national debt with excessive military spending.
But, people will figure that out eventually when they realize we have a debt problem.
The constitution also specifies ZERO for the amount of federal education spending, yet the fastest growing, cabinet level federal department is DOEd. The entire DOEd should be terminated.
I agree that there is plenty of fat in the defense budget, even the DOD says this, yet billions in defense PORK spending is at play, as EACH congressional district has skin in the game, so EACH congressman helps all of the others to keep this nonsense going. I remember reading that 37 states are "involved" in the production of the latest "joint services" fighter aircraft project, thus it has a virtual congressional "LOCK" for funding. The F22, the last "must have" military toy, has NEVER been used in combat, yet its replacement, the F35 is a "top priority" simply because congress says so.
Foreign aid and "nation building" are other massive wastes of tax money; what sense does it make to borrow money just to give it away, often to nations that don't need it, have corrupt gov'ts and are filled with people that truely hate us?
Welfare money is constantly squandered on 12% to 15% of the population, that simply refuse to get educated, get off drugs/alcohol and stop having children that they can not afford to raise, yet we spend and average of $7,500 on each of these morons and call it a "war on poverty". The same nation that frets over the cost of caring for its elderly, many that have worked their entire lives paying into SS/Medicare, willingly tosses money to the parent(s) of newborn out-of-wedlock children simply because they exist.
We subsidze the production of corn, then we subsidze the production of sugar cane/beets to offset the losses caused by the subsidized high fructose corn syrup. We need a VERY serious review of this nations spending, specifically examining the constitutional authority of and a realistic cost/benefit analysis of ALL federal spending programs.