Cutting the budget no doubt hurts the economy short-term which is why politicians never cut spending. If they’re not going to cut spending it would be nice if they transferred a lot of that defense spending over to projects that could have a better ROI through future economic growth (r&d, a super sonic transportation system, etc). Even housing all of the homeless might save money in the long run. We are very short-term in our thinking. It’s all about this and maybe next year. Almost nobody gives a fuck about a decade or two out. Most of our political leaders will be dead by then anyways so they don’t envision that stuff.