Battleangel

Who can resist a good pie chart? War Resisters League

Current military” includes Dept. of Defense ($449 billion), the military portion from other departments ($114 billion), and an unbudgetted estimate of supplemental appropriations ($100 billion). “Past military” represents veterans’ benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt.

These figures are from an analysis of detailed tables in the “Analytical Perspectives” book of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2007. The figures are federal funds, which do not include trust funds — such as Social Security — that are raised and spent separately from income taxes. What you pay (or don’t pay) by April 17, 2006, goes to the federal funds portion of the budget. The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller.

Essentially, using some common sense, almost 50% of the U.S. budget FY2007 ends up with the military in one way or another. Either paying for past or present sins (and adding up to future sorrows). How long will they be able to keep going before reality catches up? Isn’t it in fact so that it wasn’t the Soviet Union that was outspent in the end but rather America itself?