[thaumasiotes]

> However, a million here, a billion there, pretty soon, we're talking about real money.

While that may be true, the million won't have contributed to the problem in that case. :p

> At the risk of being cliche, if we did not have the loss of the $4 million per year (of just this one specific thing), what else could that money have been used for instead?

We could have raised the annual salary of active duty personnel by almost three (3) dollars a year each.

[frankbreetz]

I wonder how many "3 million dollar drops in the ocean there were".I bet if we totaled them all up service men could have gotten a very nice pay raise.

[armenarmen]

1.3 million active duty military members apparently. So kind of a “dollar menu + tax” kinda raise