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> The military is currently less than 10% of the total budget.
Not true, especially if you consider all the hidden costs.
See http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2003/maindown.html for
full government-supplied information on this. According to
http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2004/pdf/hist.pdf, page 115,
"National Defense" currently accounts for over 17% of all
outlays. That is down CONSIDERABLY from the past; as recently as
1960 it accounted for over HALF of the budget. But even 17% is
well over 10%.
However, that's not the only cost of the military. I don't
believe it includes the cost of veterans' benefits. It certainly
doesn't include the interest on the federal debt that wouldn't
have been incurred without the military spending, nor the
opportunity cost of not investing that money elsewhere. (Though
you could also argue the cost of not investing in the military
could also be high, e.g. if the USSR had taken over the world.)
Other sources, who obviously are biased (and the government
isn't??) but seem to document their case fairly well, claim the
costs are much higher. There are rabid anti-war types like
http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm that claim much higher
numbers, but I'd have to suspect their numbers may be inflated.
I think the FCNL (Friends Committee on National Legislation, run
by the Quakers religious organization) is probably less
sensationalist and more accurate. They place current military
spending at 25% and past military spending at 15%. Note that
they calculate the military % of national debt based on estimates
from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which in 1972
estimated 75% of the then-current national debt was incurred by
WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. FCNL has lowered the
current military-debt contribution to 50%. (Which seems very
low, considering that only a few years ago there was NO budget
deficit. The deficit for fiscal year 2002 was $159B -- which
means that last year the military accounted for 219% of that
year's debt!) See
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/mil/sup/military_federal-taxes-FY02.htm
However, FCNL calculates their numbers using a percentage of the
"federal funds" budget, which excludes Social Security and other
entitlements. If you adjust their figures to reflect the total %
of all outlays, which is what we're talking about here, it works
out to about 18.3% for current military and 10.8% for past
military, for a total of 29.2%. I think that's a fairly accurate
figure that realistically portrays the true costs of the
military. Imagine how much healthier our economy would be with a
41% boost in available money -- money that could be spent on more
productive things than $500 hammers and $1B bombers.
> Entitlements are not a legitimate purpose of the federal government.
> They are vote-buying programs sponsored by career politicians.
I agree. And they are an even bigger threat to the US's
financial stability than military spending. They are currently
4x larger than the military outlay (or 2x if you use the full
military cost as calculated by FCNL), and growing exponentially.
Gary
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