Though parts of the Department of Defense's budget are clearly essential to national security, many other defense expenditures are far from necessary — including the reported 234 golf courses that the Department of Defense maintains around the world. Agreeing to stop supporting the military's golf courses should be an easy first spending cut for Obama and Boehner.

Unfortunately, as a recent article at Salon notes, the exact cost of running the golf courses remains "undisclosed" by the Pentagon. Yet with a little research, we can get a general idea for how much the government spends on maintaining golf courses that are in some cases closed to the taxpayers who fund them. According to the United States Golf Association (USGA), the average cost of maintaining a golf course totaled between $384,000 and $686,000 in 1998, the most recent year that the USGA had figures available.