But even as the percentage of the federal spending sits at about half of what it was 50 years ago, some want to cut it even further.

For Ben Cohen, the politically active half of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, life's not all about ice cream anymore. Since he and Jerry Greenfield sold their Burlington, Vt., company in 2000 to Unilever, the politically conscious cofounder Cohen has turned his attention entirely to making Americans more aware of what percentage of their tax dollars goes toward funding the Pentagon's budget. His latest efforts include hitting up the early primary states and finding Democratic caucus attendees who will pledge to only vote for a candidate who promises to slice the defense budget and put that money toward social needs programs.

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From what I understand, you're trying to persuade the presidential candidates to commit part of the federal budget away from the Pentagon. How are you doing this?

About two years ago we started a grassroots campaign working with "Iowans for Sensible Priorities" and "Priorities New Hampshire" to educate people as to how the federal budget is currently sliced up. We knew from surveys that once people found out about it, people were incredulous and wanted to shift twice as much money as we're talking about.

What percent are you trying to get sliced away from the Pentagon?

It's about 13 percent. That's $60 billion and it's amazing what you can do with $60 billion. It's enough money to rebuild all our schools, provide healthcare for every kid who doesn't have it, provide food self-sufficiency for all 6 million starving kids a year in the world, and reduce our need for oil, increasing energy independence—a lot of stuff.

Cohen, of course, fudges the numbers in this project. What he shows is the proportions of government DISCRETIONARY spending. He ignores those expenditures that are not discretionary, which is about half the budget. Many of those expenditures that deal with the very social issues he wants to address – expenditures on programs that grow every year and have generally been ineffective.

But then why would we expect a super-rich socialist like Cohen to be honest? It simply is not in the nature of the Left to do so.

And I'm curious -- any American with common sense knows the War on Poverty was lost a generation ago. How many more lives and how much more treasure must be wasted on it before liberals will admit that their war policies have been a failure and devise a plan for surrender retreat redeployment of our nation's social workers and anti-poverty activists?

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