U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., gave the keynote address at the Coalition for Peace Action’s 30th anniversary Membership Dinner and Gathering on Saturday, June 18, at the McKay Campus Center of Princeton Theological Seminary.
Speaking to an audience of about 225, Rep. Frank talked about reducing Pentagon spending by $1 trillion over the next 10 years. He said we were still doing military budgets as if we had a threat to the existence of the United States, as we did from former Soviet Union.
According to the Rev. Robert Moore, executive director of the Coalition for Peace Action, Rep. Frank advocated substantial reductions in the Pentagon budget: $150 billion from stopping the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; and another $100 billion per year from the core Pentagon budget. This would reduce total military spending from about $700 billion per year to about $450 billion per year.
That would still have the United States spending more than the next 10 largest national military budgets of other nations combined.
Another example he said Rep. Frank gave was raising the question of why we continued to need three ways of delivering nuclear weapons and destroying any nation on earth many times over. Why couldn’t we get by with two ways to do that, he asked.
The Coalition for Peace Action, based in Princeton and founded in 1980, is the largest peace organization in the region, currently with more than 7,600 members and supporting households and 20 chapter-affiliates in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

