A friend listed me on his e-mail to RW friends, who e-mailed me back

[Rebel_with_a_cause]

One of his friends, a Vietnam Vet and POW said this in response to a Ben Cohen e-mail (www.TrueMajority.org/oreo) about the US budget:

As a percentage of the overall budget, the Pentagon's share has gone from almost 50% under JFK to about 15% today. All of the agencies of the Fed Gov could be cut by as much as the Pentagon budget.

Does anyone on DU have the stats on our DoD budget since Kennedy? Like every single RW e-mail that has come my way, this one isn't documented.

I did see lots of unsupported broad brushstrokes in today's RW e-mails, though:

"This is the typical leftist argument. Blame the military."

or...

"These left wing web sites are all the same. Throw money a the problem and it will go away. Look at poverty in America, we have spent billions of dollars and it still exists."

My friend insists these two guys went to college. If their responses don't prove that we need to give more money to colleges, nothing does.

[KelleyKramer]

1. Whats the original email?

"This is the typical leftist argument. Blame the military."

have no idea what they are talking about ...

It would help to know what they are responding to.

[Rebel_with_a_cause]

2. I edited the post above, to provide the True Majority url

I hadn't thought there was one in the e-mail, but there is.

[burrowowl]

3. The Pentagon takes 50% + today!

Under JFK it was 15% maybe, maybe more. Your RW friends can't even read or understand a simple animation. Is your friend brain-damaged, then he can't help it. If not, he is willfully misconstrueing fact, i.e., a liar and an a$$.

[Rebel_with_a_cause]

7. friends of a friend--I've never met them

and don't care to in the future.

[tkmorris]

4. Well.....

The information regarding defense spending as a percentage of the budget may have been taken from this chart, http://www.concordcoalition.org/federal_budget/charts/budget_history.html .

The people who put that out, The Concord Coalition, are pretty conservative though they claim to be non-partisan. Their stated goal is an elimination of deficit spending outright. It's hard to get a read on them right now, they are definitely right-wingers but Bush must be giving them intestinal pain at this point.

FWIW, I don't have any reason to doubt the figures in that chart. Those I've checked are reasonably accurate. Of course, they fail to mention the tax rates that existed when Kennedy took office. Perhaps you could suggest to them that such an exorbitant rate of defense spending would again be practical if we raised the top rate back to 90%.

[burrowowl]

5. Some reading for you

http://www.jfklibrary.org/jfk_press_conference_630403.html
http://www.voxfux.com/kennedy/farewell/farewell08.html
http://polisci.la.psu.edu/faculty/Baumgartner/Budget_Evolution.pdf.

[tkmorris]

6. That last link

The pdf file shows what I was referring to above.

In figure 6 on page 32 it shows defense spending as a percentage of the total budget over the years. In 1962 that stood at approximately 48%. By the late 90's that percentage was down to about 17%.

Of course there are tons of things not being considered fully here. All of these charts seem to include social security taxes and payments. In 1962 those numbers were very low for obvious reasons, by comparison they are huge today. This tends to skew the budget numbers badly enough that it becomes silly to compare anything across that period of time as a percentage of the overall budget. Also, that pdf has no figures past 99. The link I posted has projections for up to 2006 or so but the figures are a good bit off of the actual numbers. Defense spending has grown rather dramatically the last couple of years.

[Rebel_with_a_cause]

8. Thanks to all above for your links

I will have a look.

When RWers don't provide their rationale, as has been my experience with them, it takes research to figure out where they come up with the notions that they subscribe to.

I appreciate your efforts in unraveling the mystery.