The United States needs to carry a smaller stick.

That was the message Rep. Barney Frank delivered to more than 125 people during the ninth annual Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action meeting at Temple Ohabei Shalom on Sunday.

“The time has come for a significant reduction in America’s worldwide military reach,” said Frank, a Democrat in his 16th term as representative for the Fourth Congressional District.

The United States is currently fighting two wars and supporting a Defense Department with a budget of approximately $660 billion in 2009. Without reductions in that spending, Frank said, the country will not have the resources it needs alleviate foreclosures, decrease unemployment and stimulate the economy.  

“What we need to do is to reduce what we are trying to do,” the congressman said, referring to the military. “It is not enough to do better what we are now doing. We have to do less. I will be crusading for that.”

Frank argued that the U.S. military has had a habit of overextending itself, citing the war in Iraq and Marines stationed in Okinawa, Japan, as examples. He said Defense Secretary Robert Gates is just now considering removing troops from Okinawa.

“Most people thought the Marines left when John Wayne died,” said Frank. “They have no purpose.”

Despite his objection to having a large military footprint, Frank said he was not promoting isolationism; rather, the congressman wants efficacy in spending.

“If we intervene all over the world, and the intervention was morally useful, if it improved people’s lives, if it dawned democracy, I would be conflicted about saying we can’t afford it,” said Frank. “But in most cases, we do more harm than good.”

Frank asked those in the audience at Sunday's meeting to urge their lawmakers to join him in pushing for military spending reform.

“Give my liberal colleagues the courage of their conviction that we have got to reduce military spending because it is a good thing in itself and it is a precondition to getting anything else done, and you’ve done a good day’s work,” Frank said.