The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) reports that 24,000 people die from hunger everyday- 18,000 of them are children. WFP has outlined more than 10 countries where over 35 percent of the population is undernourished, such as Afghanistan, Korea, Columbia, and many parts of Africa.

According to the World Watch Institute, a global research think-tank, if the United States spent $36 billion in foreign aid and outreach programs, we could eliminate hunger and malnutrition worldwide. Instead, our government dumps billions into the military budget.

While many major news outlets have reported that the new 2006-2007 budget allocates $474 billion to the military, a closer analysis reveals that real military spending is much higher. In actuality, we are giving it half of our entire budget.

After you add the spending for Iraq and Afghanistan, which are not included in the budget, the costs of veterans’ disability payments and medical administration costs, the portion of our debt which accumulated from past military expenditures, and the money earmarked for increased infrastructure building, demobilization and future military efforts, our total military spending equals $1.1 trillion, half of the $2.2 trillion budget for 2007.

The United States military budget is many times larger than what any other nation spends. Combine the military budgets of the next 20 biggest spenders, including China, Russia, Japan, and India, and we still spend more. We spend almost seven times more on our military than China, our closest competitor.

Meanwhile, less than one percent of our budget is dedicated to foreign aid. This year, $400 million will be cut from poverty-focused development assistance programs. For instance, the Child Survival and Health fund, an agency which helps to provide basic health care services to the impoverished, will receive a 13 percent budget cut. And we are cutting $15 million from the United Nations Development Program, an agency which fights AIDS and provides resources and education in 166 countries.

“This is not about being a bleeding heart liberal,” says Anuradha Mittal, director of the Oakland Institute, an economic policy think-tank. “It’s gotten to the point where we put so much money into the military budget that we have to cut the budget for everything else. And vital foreign aid programs are hit the hardest.”

Yet it’s not just international neglect. At a time when 45 million Americans don’t have health coverage, health care programs for the poor are being slashed. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 2006 budget cuts from the Medicaid national health care plan will lead to another 65,000 people losing health coverage by the year 2015.

“We are slashing the funding for public health care programs like Medicaid, and this leads to increased illness and disease,” says Juan Prada, director of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. “Especially because a lot of people receiving Medicaid are either low income or they’re living on the streets. Just look at what’s happening in San Francisco. Several thousand are losing their place of residence because of cuts from affordable housing programs like Section 8 and HUD.”

HUD, or the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is the federal department that provides low-income housing. According to Prada, the entire yearly budget of HUD is equal to what we spend for two weeks of war in Iraq.

The cuts hit Simon Hadley, a homeless man who frequently eats at the St. Anthony’s Foundation soup kitchen in the Tenderloin. He has a dent in his head from a police baton and a large scar on his leg to remind him of the police dog’s fangs. Hadley‘s mind isn‘t stable and his condition automatically disqualifies him from employment. Nine months ago, he was receiving $680 a month in government assistance. Now the money is mostly gone, and today he lives on $80 a month.

The bloated Pentagon budget is at the heart of the lack of funding for social programs. And what are they using that budget for? The General Accounting Office (GAO) recently examined how the Pentagon awarded $8 billion to various defense firms like Boeing and Lockheed Martin over a three and a half year period. The money was supposed to be a reward for cheap prices and fast performance. But the GAO concluded that the companies did nothing to earn the extra money.

Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest employers in the Bay Area, was awarded with a contract to supply C130J transport planes to the Air Force. And the Air Force admitted that Lockheed made a handsom 20 to 25 percent profit off the deal, because the price of the planes doubled within a decade.

Despite evidence of waste, Congress has manipulated the American citizen’s fear of terrorism to justify more funding for the military. But how does throwing money at the Pentagon prevent terrorism?

“Congress is under the impression that people are not paying attention to social problems like poverty,” says Lee Farris, senior organizer at United for a Fair Economy. “But the longer they ignore the startling poverty here and abroad, we’re going to be creating environments that promote terrorism, because terrorism springs from poverty.”