The other piece of this is that we call for cutting our bloated and dangerous military budget. And this is something that is made possible by moving to 100% clean renewable energy, where we cannot justify wars for oil, and where we cannot justify having some 700, 800 bases gathered around the world in something like 100 countries in significant measure protecting either access to fossil fuels or protecting routes of transportation.
We call for a welcoming path to citizenship, an end to police violence, and a transformed foreign policy based on international law and human rights - not based on these policies of regime change and economic and military domination.
I don't want to revisit history or try to re-interpret it, you know, but starting from where we are now, given the experience that we've had in the last, you know, since 2001, which has been an utter disaster, I don't think it's benefited us. Half of our discretionary budget, right, it's like 54% of our discretionary budget right now is being spent on the military. This is not working.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump basically share a policy of brute military strength. And both, I think, make a lot of Americans uneasy about our foreign policy going forward, which needs a frank discussion. Likewise on the issue of student debt and the future of our younger generation.
If my campaign is not in the debate, we will not be talking about how we really fix this problem of endless and expanding war, why we need to cut the military budget by 50%, why we need to bring back our troops scattered overseas, the police force of the world, in over a hundred countries, something like eight hundred bases, but who's counting, why we need to basically bring those troops home and why we need to stop this policy of regime change, these wars on terror, which only create more terror. This needs to be debated.
According to the National Priorities Project, military expenditures are 54% of the budget. The next biggest line item is 7%. And there are a whole bunch of 7 percents. So in short, we have a military budget surrounded by a lot of footnotes. This is not serving us well.
I don't know if I ever mentioned back in 2002 we fought our way into a governor's debate in Massachusetts where, you know, this was televised and I articulated our usual agenda: cut the military, put the dollars into true security here at home, provide healthcare as a human right, raise wages which needed to be living wages, green our energy system, equal marriage? - we were the only ones talking about it back in 2002.
The only one benefiting from this, the American taxpayer, almost half of our taxes, our income taxes, are going to the military and to these wars.
Bernie's campaign was very principled in most regards, I think, you know, he certainly didn't go far enough in questioning the military policy, the military-industrial complex, and so on, but you know I think that's the price you pay for being in the Democratic Party. And Bernie [Sanders] has to pay that price.
This is another area in which savings can also be moved from wasteful - like the F-35 weapons system that will cost us $1.5 trillion by the time it's done and it's obsolete, you know, it's a weapons system - as well as this global military infrastructure, which is unlike anything the world has ever known at any time.
