Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his April 1953 “Chance for Peace” speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said, “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. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. … This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.”

Now, more than 60 years later, such choices weigh more heavily than ever as a new president sets out budget choices that call for a $54 billion increase in military spending, but deep cuts into programs many Americans see as important.

Read more at The Loveland Reporter-Herald.