Is this TRUE, or NOT? Is 55% of the total US budget going to MILITARY??

[nikto]

I had a friendly argument yesterday over the percentage of the total yearly
US budget that is now going to the military.

I have heard repeatedly it is 55%, MORE THAN HALF.

I have found numerous "peace blogs" and anti-war sites that say this, and refer to the CBO as source,
but I can't find the actual Congressional Budget Office (CBO) page
which actually HAS that number? (i.e.55% of total outlay going to military).

Unless I can find the ORIGINAL GOV'T SOURCE for this number, I won't be able to convince my friend,
who insisted it was 25 or 30%, or somewhere in that vicinity.

So, uh, is it a LIE? An exaggeration?
Are our "liberal sources" doing a "Fox News" on us?

I need a solid, objective source, here!

Where can I get THE OFFICIAL LISTING OF THAT NUMBER?

Is it actually REAL?

If so, how do I substantiate it?

Can anybody steer me straight on this?

I just need to get an IMPARTIAL/OBJECTIVE source that vberifies this nice-looking,
but possibly "biased" pie chart:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/images/discretionary-spending/image_preview

[Warpy]

1. Depends on how you define 'military.'

The higher figure includes the so-called entitlements like the VA system and military pensions. The lower figure is what we're pouring down that 5 sided building in Washington as a welfare program for arms dealers.

[Foo Fighter]

38. "Welfare program for arms dealers."

That's the best description of the Pentagon I've ever heard.

Well, except for those that use language that probably should be posted here. ;)

[Hannah Bell]

2. link with more links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget






depends on how you figure.

social security & medicare self-funding, not financed out of income taxes, so imo, they're not part of the "regular budget".

if you're looking at what's financed out of IRS taxes, military = number 1.


Discretionary spending: $1.368 trillion (+13.1%)

$663.7 billion (+12.7%) – Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)
$52.5 billion (+10.3%) – Department of Veterans Affairs

[Juche]

3. Its an exaggeration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget

It is closer to 20% (around 25-30% when you add in non DoD expenses which are military related).

[ClassWarrior]

12. Ohhh... Wikipedia... An authoritative source...

:rofl:

NGU.

[harkadog]

27. I'm sure you will be posting a link to disprove it.

[ClassWarrior]

55. I did. See "TRUE. The pie chart, the story and their sources..." below.

As a matter of fact, I posted that BEFORE I posted the one you answered. (It helps to look first before shooting off one's mouth.)

NGU.

[ClassWarrior]

56. Helllooooooo???...

:shrug:

NGU.

[Name removed]

35. Deleted message

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[nikto]

13. If that is true,

then my friend wins the argument.x(

[Greyhound]

46. It's the usual smoke & mirrors routine and how you choose count things.

Looking at the cited chart from the White House http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Military_budget_and_total_US_federal_spending">via Wikipedia, you'll see the number most often reported, but even a cursory glance shows how those numbers are skewed to minimize the percentages...

20% right off the top for counting SS (fully self-funding), so the amount labeled 23% becomes 28% and so on.

"Other Mandatory" and "Other Discretionary" includes a lot of things (like two wars) that stupid people might consider military but accountants paid to make things look a certain way don't show up as "Defense".

If you go through the budget, as only someone paid to do so can, you'll find military spending throughout nearly every Federal budget. They've gone to great lengths for decades to hide the obscenity that is the Federal Black Hole.

(Bonus question; any idea how much of our money the Pentagon can not account for?)

[G_j]

50. +1000

was it 3.3 trillion?

[Greyhound]

53. Winner!

Yes, that's right. More than enough make up 30 years of deprivation and theft, health care as well as welfare, and just from "the change they lost down the sofa cushions".

[Hannah Bell]

39. only if you're counting everything funded by dedicated fica taxes as part of the general budget.

which they shouldn't be. they're all self-funding programs, not funded out of general revenues.

if you omit those funds, military spending is indeed somewhere around 40-50% of the general budget. & that's just the clearly delineated stuff: dod, war on terror, homeland security, veterans dept.

if you start teasing out the military spending in state, nasa, ag, % of interest payments on military spending, etc. - the percent grows.

[Juche]

42. But that ignores the size of the federal budget

If you exclude programs like SS and medicare, then the federal budget shrinks by over a trillion. And when you add in all the military programs spread out among the budget (department of veteran affairs, dept. of state, dept of homeland security, parts of DoE and NASA, etc) then the total military budget is closer to $900 billion or so.

If you look at all government spending (probably about 5 trillion in federal, state & local). I'd assume about 1 trillion total goes to military in one form or another.

[Hannah Bell]

47. i understand that. take out ss & mc spending & calculate military spending % without them.

take out UE & everything else financed through fica as well.

military spending is about 40-50% of the general (income-tax financed) budget.

[Name removed]

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[Wilms]

8. What's the source for those figures?

Thanks.

[ClassWarrior]

9. "Mostly war resistors??" As in "resistance is futile?"

Did you make a wrong left turn, Dude?

NGU.

[sharesunited]

5. The Wikipedia pie chart shows it at around 19 percent. I was surpised and encouraged by that.

[Hannah Bell]

11. 19% of *everything* including self-funding programs financed through fica taxes.

If you look at income-tax financed programs (i.e. the general budget, not self-funding accounts like social security & medicare), defense is indeed the biggest item.

[sharesunited]

14. Should be easy to get a defense tax passed then, shouldn't it? Or force a reduction.

[Imajika]

23. Yeah, but all that self funding money...

..just gets dumped into the general revenue anyway right?

We are spending the social security surplus as we speak on all sorts of things that have nothing to do with social security. This is precisely why it will be in trouble fairly soon - there is not and never has been a lockbox to really keep entitlement programs off-budget. I mean, if there was, our deficits would look even worse than they are now.

From what I gather, the military spending is just over 50% of discretionary spending, and about 20% of all spending when you include SSI, Medicare, etc.

I think, for many reasons, one could cite either figure and make a valid argument.

Edited for using "I mean" just far too many times ;)

[Hannah Bell]

41. you're confusing revenues with expenses.

social security collections are currently bigger than social security outlays.

social security spending is completely funded through fica.

after retirees' checks are cut, the excess fica collections go into the general budget.

better to borrow it from ourselves than from china.

at any rate, not relevant to the point. ss & medicare are funded by a dedicated tax, not income tax. they're not (IMO, anyway) part of "general spending". & through most of their history, they weren't treated as such.

[ClassWarrior]

6. TRUE. The pie chart, the story and their sources...

CHART:


STORY: http://www.truemajority.org/csba/priorities.php

SOURCES: http://www.truemajority.org/csba/sources.php

NGU.

[nikto]

15. What is the "X" part?

X(15%)=??

[ClassWarrior]

18. That's the portion that True Majority proposes trimming from the war budget...

...to fund needed social programs:

Our prestigious panel of high-ranking retired military and Dept. of Defense officials says $60 billion can be trimmed from the Pentagon budget without putting our troops at risk, weakening our national defense, or hurting our ability to fight terrorists. According to Dr. Lawrence Korb, who served as President Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of defense, the savings would come primarily from cutting obsolete Cold War weapons and excessive nuclear weapons from the defense budget. See Korb Report for more information.

Even after trimming $60 billion from the Pentagon budget, America would spend nearly as much on defense as does the rest of the world combined. We would spend more than triple the amount spent by Russia , China , and the Axis of Evil combined.

NGU.

[Festivito]

54. That Pie doesn't include interest on debt.

Bush would not include SS and MC into his budgets. In fact, he would not include war costs either making them separate emergency spending requests.

So, if you pull a Bush and call the total budget being without SS and MC(which makes sense since they pay for themselves), then add in the war costs and as well include the debt cost as a military expenditure since it is what cost us most of the borrowing all those years, then it does work out to be over half our budget.

[Captain Hilts]

7. No. And, no, we don't have 700 bases worldwide either. nt

[ClassWarrior]

10. Sources please?

NGU.

[harkadog]

28. We have 737 world wide

http://www.alternet.org/story/47998

[NYC_SKP]

45. That's the claim of an article on "teh internet" which does not provide a source.

It says it's according to an official source.

So it must be true?

It talked about 38 bases worldwide, that sounds about right.

[Hannah Bell]

48. source:

From the book NEMESIS: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson.

Chalmers Ashby Johnson is an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean war, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967–1973, and led the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for years.<1> He is also president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute (now based at the University of San Francisco), an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia.<2> He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.


Johnson cites mentions various sources in the article (e.g. DOD & the The 2005 Base Structure Report).

I imagine the book notes would provide the details.

Johnson's a reputable journalist on a reputable newssite (alternet), not just some guy on the "internets".

So I'm not inclined to be so dismissive.


"The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston.

The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas since 9/11..."

etc.

http://www.alternet.org/story/47998


take a look at page 22 "site size summaries"

http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/bsr/BSR2008Baseline.pdf

[NYC_SKP]

51. Thanks. So, a considerable number of these were established in the past 9 years.

Scary.

[L0oniX]

16. 700+ billion a year for defense. Defense = offense = anything the military wants.

Gotta make sure the MIC keeps it's war jobs doncha know. Damn the civilians ...everyone should sign up.:sarcasm:

The real point is that our country is more willing to spend money on the military more than it is willing to spend it on its own people in need of medical care, housing, SS ...etc.

[Name removed]

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[Hannah Bell]

20. lol. sure, the war resisters' league is based in north korea. uh-huh.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

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[ClassWarrior]

26. Here lies Fred.

He smoked in bed.

:rofl:

NGU.

[Unvanguard]

19. Maybe discretionary spending. Not total spending. n/t

[Wilms]

21. Make sure the WHOLE thing is tallied.

That would include things like interest payments. As far as I'm concerned, they borrow every nickel of that. Is the cost doubled, or tripled, by the time it's paid off?

Also, part of the war funding is through emergency appropriation not part of the defense budget. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

[TreasonousBastard]

24. You're kinda right, but you'll never convince your friend because...

the two humongous items, Medicare and Social Security are "off budget" and supposedly self-sustaining from their own financing. Other things, like the secret CIA, NSA and other blackops budgets don't appear anywhere, but would probably be considered military if you could find them.

Even much of the current war expenses are off-budget and buried in some hole somewhere, so much of it doesn't show up in the Pentagon's budget. And a lot of our foriegn aid is weapons deals.

Add it all up, and the total amount of the checks written for various military adventures probably won't add up to half the amount we spend, but we'll never really know for sure.

However, admitted military expenditures do add up to at around half of the discretionary spending that's published.

(It all depends on how you count the numbers...)

[BalancedGoat]

25. It's true for discretionary spending only.

I had the same questions as you a while ago so I looked into it. I don't have the links handy, but what I found was that it's only true if you only look at discretionary spending. When you look at the whole budget it shrunk to somewhere around a third.

I find those pie graphs to be misleading because they've picked budget figures that maximize their point usually without telling you that they're using a subset of budgetary numbers.

[booley]

29. in 2008 , 623 billion for defense out of 2.5 trillion

That would be less the 55% (more like less then a quarter)

Adding in the supplemental would only boost that a bit. Presumably the parts of the defense budget that are secret wouldn't add that much more. (but we can't be sure)

That percentage probably has gone up but only becuase military spending continues to rise even as revenue falls and other things gets cut.

HOWEVER, getting into this kid of numbers game seems to miss the real issue.

We still spend far more then anyone else, over half of all military spending is from the US.

What do we get for all that money? And could we get the same if not better results more cheaply?

I think it's rediculous to conclude that if we need to cut spending, that the military is some kind of sacred cow.

Anyway, here is one source though it's a bit obtuse and they don't just list military spending as "military spending" they break it down more then that.

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/index.html

[midnight armadillo]

36. it's more than that

A lot of military spending is hidden in other areas. For example, the Dept of Energy maintains stewardship of the stockpile of nuclear weapons, but that spending is not included in the usual tally of military spending.

The Brookings institute estimated in 1998 that the nuclear weapons program from 1940-1996 in 1996 dollars cost $5.5 TRILLION. Book: http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/1998/atomic.aspx
On average over 56 years that's an extra $100 billion per year not in DoD funds.


*Includes average projected future-year costs for nuclear weapons dismantlement and fissile materials disposition and environmental remediation and waste management. Total actual and estimated expenditures through 1996 were $5,481.1 billion.

Source: Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Brookings Institution Press, 1998)

Copyright © 1998 The Brookings Institution

[Hannah Bell]

40. 2.5 trillion includes social security & medicare spending. they're not funded through income tax.

they're self-funding.

[Lorien]

30. Globally we make up nearly half of all defense spending:

[elias49]

31. The US spends a shitload -

more than all the rest of the countries in the world combined, according to GlobalSecurity.org

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm

[L0oniX]

33. If only we restrained spending to a little more than the Russians.

Oh but no ...we got to destroy our country by spending every last dime on the killing machine.

[Bluerthanblue]

32. how about a cookie chart?

http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/

Ben Cohen explains our spending for everyone to understand.

[EFerrari]

34. I love that graph. lol

[MadHound]

37. Yes, it's true

They hide the true figure by using tricks such as hiding the cost of our nuclear fleet in the DOE budget instead of the DOD budget. There are also lots and lots of black budget appropriations for the military that don't show up on any official radar.

It's been this way for awhile, which is why our country has been going down hill over the past few decades, spending more on the MIC than on the people.

[patrice]

43. K & R

[Statistical]

44. No. One thing is military is about 20% of federal budget however we have state and local govt.

Add in all forms of govt expenditures and military is closer to 12%. Still too high IMHO but 55%+ is just a misrepresentation that does more harm then good.

[Hannah Bell]

49. military is indeed about 40-50% of federal general spending.

& if you include things like military portion of federal interest payments & military expenses hidden in non-military budgets, i'd imagine you could get to 55%.

[ClassWarrior]

52. Sources please?

NGU.