""The question remains: How many guns are necessary to maintain a high level of security for the U.S., and how much butter can the nation afford without hurting guns and vice versa?"â€” David Briceno, "â€˜Guns vs. Butter,' America's Political Dilemma," The Union in the quotation above, "butter" refers to"__________.

This quote deals with the problem of the ever increasing cost of national defense versus the welfare of the citizens. The US spends more money on national defense than any other country in the world, around 37% of the total military budget of the world. It also represents 15% of the total federal budget and almost half of all discretionary spending.

That is a lot of money to be distributed among a small number of private firms. Usually Republicans tend to favor a large army, but Democrats never lower their budget either. The largest military contractors are Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon. They are all located in blue states, actually Maryland currently has a Republican governor but both their senators are democrats as well as most of the representatives. Boeing has its headquarters in Washington State and Raytheon in Massachusetts. These aren't blue states, they are indigo states.

But as the military budget increases and the power of military contractors also increases, who will dare to stop them. Military spending is much higher than welfare spending, even if you throw in Medicaid into the equation ($1.6 trillion vs $1 trillion).

The question really is, are guns more important than the well being of our citizens? I guess it depends who you ask.