Those numbers are accurate, but the deception is what they are measuring it against. 50-80% of DISCRETIONARY spending is NOT 50-80% of the Budget. I can show it as a different way that I think may be more relevant. Military spending as a percent of GDP. Right now, the military budget is only 3.8% of GDP. Obama's budget's show an increase in Dollars spent next year, however, the military budget will be shrinking to around 3.0% of GDP, so it's actually a reduction. As a point of reference, during the Vietnam war, it was 8.9% of GDP, during WWII, it was 34.5% of GDP. Even during the Reagan years, it never got higher than 6% of GDP. Here's a couple of images that may help... You can see that Defense is a huge part of the discretionary budget, but that's only because the discretionary budget is being squeezed out by all the mandatory spending and entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, etc.) I'm not a fan of our military being the police of the world and being spread all over the globe, but Defense spending ain't the problem... It's the 800 pound Gorilla of entitlements and interest payments on our debt. Okay... election day is over, so I guess I'm done until next year. :-) That last chart is showing 2052, about the time my children will be retiring, as our legacy to them... So , I guess if any of us are alive in 2052, at least we won't be able to afford any military at all, so that budget problem is solved... :-) Rob McCall On Nov 02, 2010, at 15:35 , David Andersen wrote: > Here's a couple things to look at: > http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative-size.php#outlays-graph > > http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpolicy/p/2008_defense.htm > > Military spending has for 50 years been between 50% and 80% of our country's total yearly discretionary spending. And that doesn't include the classified or "black" part of the defense budget, which most experts believe is at least half again the size of the published total. We're a war empire. That's the truth. The vast majority of that cash goes into weapons systems and support. It's by far our country's largest manufacturing sector. > > Do some research, kids. The internet is amazing. > DA > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101103/4f6f574a/attachment-0001.htm> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: entitlement-interest-spending-squeezes-federal-spending-600.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 152901 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101103/4f6f574a/attachment-0002.jpg> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: entitlements-historical-tax-levels-600.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 156746 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101103/4f6f574a/attachment-0003.jpg>
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