Eisenhower was also afraid that high levels of defense spending would give too much power to military leaders and defense contractors. The result could be a "garrison state" that distorted priorities. "Every gun that is made," he said in 1953, "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 not clothed."35 This did not mean that he believed in large-scale government social programs to relieve suffering; far from it, for those, too, would unbalance the budget. But he did worry that heavy spending
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