Deficits All Over

Do you know how much the Federal government of the United States spent on the Department of Defence is 2006? Well, okay, rather how much the government allocated in the budget for the DOD, because there is also a lot of money allocated outside of the budget. According to the Washington Post (and my apologies if you can't view this link), 419.3 billion dollars, again not counting extra allocations.

According to the White House, which actually seems proud of this next quote:

Under this Administration, the Department of Defense (DOD) has received the largest increases in funding since the Reagan Administration, and this Budget builds upon that record. The 2006 request represents a 41-percent increase over 2001, and a 4.8-percent increase over 2005.

Ah, the Reagan years. I'm sure we remember fondly the unprecedented military spending of those wonderful times. There were Commies to the left of us, Commies to the right, and here we were, stuck in the middle with Ronnie. I have no idea how Gerry Rafferty felt about the defence budget of the USA when he wrote that song.

According to wikipedia, which in turn gets most of its facts from the CIA, the USA in 2005 spent roughly 58% of the money the entire world spent on the military. You can argue with these numbers, but the fact is that the USA spends more money on the Defence Department than it does on any other department, a lot more.

I could use this as an argument against war, which I would feel perfectly right in doing. War is expensive. But that point of view doesn't win many friends and influence many people. I just want to know where the Hell the government gets off spending this much money on defence. No one, not even countries ruled by the iron fist of the military, spends this much money. The figures are not per capita or factored as a percentage of the GNP, but if we can't afford all those things the government says we can't afford, why the hell not? We have all sorts of money being funneled into the most bloated program the world has ever known (hyperbole but true anyway) and we can't afford things?

This is not a liberal/conservative thing. It isn't a Democrat/Republican thing. The Defence Department is a sacred cow which no one in government will go after because they are afraid of seeming cowardly. Where's the cowardice in wondering why we aren't getting our money's worth? How does it support our troops to spend this money? We can ask these questions about education, about the EPA, or about programs which seem much more vital to our national security than space-based defenses against Communist ICBMs (of which there are relatively few these days), but ask them about the defence department and you're a peacenik hippy Commie-lib.

Where's the accountability? Where does the money go? How does pouring billions of dollars into the military make our military better? I don't have the answers to these questions, and I'm not sure anyone does. I'm not arguing that we spend too much money on defence (not here, anyway), I'm merely wondering how we can spend so much and yet seemingly still need more.

Brand me a peacenik hippy Commie-lib if you like. From a big-government standpoint, I'm actually being extremely conservative.