And - remember the carrier fleet is overseas basing. But not losing money into propping up already healthy economies such as Germany, Japan, and Korea.
Link. And then rationally downsize personnel once distant troops reach the homeland.
And look at stateside installations. Is Fort Drum needed, despite the fierce demands from the woman politician who replaced Cheney in GOP House leadership? She got her district subsidy that way, pushing for funding, but how much of that is needed to equal a bad thing.
Giving up something in some places allows more humane healthcare policy and funding. Better schools - funding. Day care funding at a time when birth rate might better be boosted rather than further quelled. With two wage earner families a norm now for survival, child rearing can suffer without funded policy against it. With single-parent families in record numbers too, which is stressful beyond two working parent households, adjustments helping single parent needs would be wise. It is like the old Econ 101 guns-and-butter bit. The '50s absorbed demobilized soldiers from Korea without great hurt, no bonus army rebellion, so look back at how it was managed.
But it was managed. That is the message to which we need to hold true.
Just as "Defund the Police" exaggerates "Downsize the Police" where much orderly and routine non-dangerous services can be shifted to a lower cost, lower boiling point workforce alternative. Cops are cops, not social workers, so task accordingly.
Shift money from numbers on patrol to oversight and educating for patrol function efficiencies - bang for the buck, by teaching crisis disarming roles rather than valuing big tough guy confrontation and escalation. Weed out the Bob Kroll problem cops. That is a matter of will, rather than method.
Just as now it is universal that parking infractions are not needful of police armed force in partol cars showing up to write parking tickets, so it should be on 911 triage beyond, "We'll send a patrol car." "It'll take a half hour."
Bottom line - close bases here and abroad. Downsize U.S. government force upon us here, and upon others a world away.
The never ending war just ended. Downsize accordingly. Weapons contractors can take a haircut without turning into profitless shells of failed ventures. Save fuel. Help cut global warming that way too.
Put money into human good rather than into human control. Money saved can go to wind farms, battery installations, and solar panels so that dominating the oil nations with force becomes unneeded for our lives to prosper. VA hospitals are better to fund than overseas forces.
And disarm the population bomb. It is still ticking whether getting press coverage or not. Fewer can prosper on less. Don't deplete the aquifers, but feed everyone, becomes less tricky with fewer to feed.
Buy less munition chemicals from China. Use less. Waste less.
Just, please, don't militarize police because surplus humvees and such come around. Stockpile. Cops do not need four-mile-to-the-gallon armored personnel carriers as much as robotic bomb handling hardware.
Be smart. (They try it, they may like it. Novelty aside.)
With claims being jobs open without takers, the labor pool could absorb deploying down the full-time combat-ready numbers.