In general, I think government waste is a red herring. It's such a vanishingly small percentage of the overall budget that it often is a stalking horse for a de

In general, I think government waste is a red herring. It's such a vanishingly small percentage of the overall budget that it often is a stalking horse for a desire to have the government deregulate industries, for example. Now let's talk about waste in military spending. I would also count the off-the-books (as in, not part of the official budget) spending as wasteful military spending, almost by definition. So now we're talking a very large fraction of the federal budget. Note, however, that arguments to "get the government out" of various affairs rarely include the military. People who complain about "pork" in government spending: if you were really serious about cutting spending, you'd include the military (like the UK government recently did). But they never do.