Defense Spending: Scrambies Looks at the Numbers

I have long been frustrated by the amount of money the United States spends on national defense. Even more disturbing, I think, is the tendency to label as "weak," "unconcerned with national security," or "a damned hippie" anyone who questions how much revenue is allocated for defense. While, I understand the need for a strong military, the U.S. does spend more on its military than all of the other countries on the planet combined. Critics are right, in my opinion, to question whether the hundreds of billions of dollars our federal government spends on defense is used wisely and efficiently.

Knowing that military expenditures have increased substantially under the current administration, I thought I'd look at the ratios of defense spending to both education and health spending and how these ratios have changed over the years. I had assumed that the defense-to-education and defense-to-health ratios would have risen since Bush II took office, but I was mistaken. Both ratios have actually decreased significantly under the past three administrations. (One might say that both ratios have decreased since the end of the Cold War.) Check out this chart I made on Microsoft Excel:



Spending figures for FY 1984-2005 and projections for FY 2006 from the White House's historical tables. Trendlines are exponential functions.

Of course, I have done a very simple analysis of recent federal budgets; Slate suggests that the amount allotted to the military in the FY 2007 budget, $439.3 billion, is a misleading figure—that the actual amount budgeted for defense is as much as $580 billion. Still, my personal research keeps me from putting much energy into attacking the President's FY 2007 budget.