Energy subsidies. Corporate welfare. Catfish-inspection programs. As I detailed in a recent column, the federal budget is rife with spending that is highly questionable, to put it mildly.
No wonder the national debt exceeds $19 trillion. It seems policymakers just can’t say no to anything. Except when it comes to defense.
For fiscal 2017, President Obama has requested $551 billion for the base defense budget, plus funding for ongoing operations, for a total of $610 billion. That sounds like a lot of money — but only if you overlook a couple of very important points.
One is that these amounts, historically speaking, are extraordinarily low. Few people will be surprised that the U.S. spent more on defense in the Reagan years (the same investment of gross domestic product would be $1.1 trillion annually, on average). But it was $917 billion annually during the Carter years, and $761 billion when George W. Bush was in office.
The military’s budget was even higher during the Clinton years: $624 billion. Now we’re talking about lowering it to $610 billion. As defense expert Justin Johnson recently pointed out, “As a percent of the government spending or total economy, the U.S. has not spent so little on national defense since the end of World War II.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
