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In fiscal year 2015, US military spending was projected to account for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, a total of $598.5 billion. Translation

In fiscal year 2015, US military spending was projected to account for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, a total of $598.5 billion. Translation: they need even more money.

onepointsixC 8y ago
Aka 16% of the total budget.
rayiner 8y ago
Both "federal" and "discretionary" are weasel qualifiers that attempt to make military spending look artificially large. For one thing, defense is one of the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing--you would expect defense to account for a disproportionately large fraction of "federal" expenditures. (And it makes for misleading comparisons to countries with unified governments, where military spending is reported as a percentage of all government spending.) For another thing, many expenditures are mandatory rather than discretionary, for good reason. Peoples' social security checks shouldn't vary from year-to-year based on government finances. That doesn't mean that social security spending should be ignored when you're looking at the percentage of government spending that goes to the military. Total government expenditures in the U.S. is $7.65 trillion. The military budget is less than 8% of that. We're on the higher side, but that's less than for example India or Singapore. As a percentage of GDP we're at 3.1%, which is again on the high side but not crazy out of line. France is at 2.3%, and the NATO target for Europe is 2%. In the early 1990s, France and UK were spending the same percentage of GDP as the U.S. is spending now (over 3%). I remember people talking about Seinfeld and Friends back then, but not about how the U.K. and France were crazy out-of-control with their military spending.
- vkou 8y ago
  > Both "federal" and "discretionary" are weasel qualifiers that attempt to make military spending look artificially large. > For one thing, defense is one of the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing And "Defense" is a weasel qualifier that attempts to make military spending look artificially necessary. Most military expenditures are not for defensive purposes.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  > defense is one of the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing Most people agree the government should also be providing some type of insurance i.e. social safety net.(social security, medicare) Also where are you getting the 7.65 trillion number from? Most numbers I've seen were close to 4 trillion see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...
  - harryh 8y ago
    Federal government spending is about 4 trillion. 7.65 is Fed + State + Local.
- avar 8y ago
  > "federal" and "discretionary" are weasel qualifiers that attempt to make military spending look artificially large[...] It's not just a weasel qualifier. There is mandatory military spending in the US, e.g. pensions paid to retired members of the military. Considering pensions paid to veterans a part of military spending is the norm, e.g. NATO's % GDP numbers take that into account for all its members. > For one thing, defense is one of the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing[..] Sure, but the extent to which it does it is largely discretionary. It's mostly a political decision to keep spending more today as a percentage of GDP than the US was doing in the 1930s[1], or to name an example closer to the current day more than was being spent on September 10th, 2001. 1. https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1792_2010USp_11s1lo011lcn_30f https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1792_201...
  - rayiner 8y ago
    > It's not just a weasel qualifier. There is mandatory military spending in the US, e.g. pensions paid to retired members of the military. So? When you're talking about how the military budget is too big, how does it make sense to exclude all the mandatory social spending from the calculation? > Sure, but the extent to which it does it is largely discretionary. That's not the point. Because defense is one of the few things the federal government is supposed to do, looking only at the federal budget will always make defense spending seem artificially large. You see people say stuff like "the U.S. spends more on defense than education!" In fact, we spend more on K-12 alone than defense--it's just that the education spending shows up in the $3.5 trillion of non-federal spending. We spend almost as much on infrastructure as on the military, a fact that is again obscured if you're looking only at the federal budget.
    - avar 8y ago
      I wasn't trying to refute your larger point that quoting some arbitrary part of a government's total % of GDP spending is mostly meaningless. I was saying that your claim that "discretionary" in "discretionary military spending" is a weasel qualifier is wrong, because that part of the budget is meaningfully broken down into discretionary and non-discretionary spending. You can decide to scale active military personnel up and down, you can't (as easily) decide to stop paying military pensions. > [...]defense is one of the few things the federal government is supposed to do[...] So you keep saying, but the upthread comment is clearly about how much is being spent on that topic. Just because there's a law saying a certain part of the government is entrusted with a given task doesn't mean it's not meaningful to discuss how much needs to be spent on that task.
manfredo 8y ago
Federal discretionary spending is a very specific type of spending. Overall, military budget has consumed a shrinking percentage of GDP overall. From around 11% in the 1950s to around 4% today: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/DoD-GDP-chart.png https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/DoD-GDP-chart.png
gingerbread-man 8y ago
That's a rather misleading statement. Discretionary spending makes up less than a third of the federal budget. Defense spending works out to about 15% of federal spending overall. Confusion seems to arise because mandatory spending programs (like social security, medicare, medicaid, and the VA) are budgeted separately, as is the interest paid on federal government debt. The United States spent $609 billion on defense last year. Surely it's possible to make the case for DOD cutbacks without misleading statistics.

In fiscal year 2015, US military spending was projected to account for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, a total of $598.5 billion. Translation: they need even more money.

onepointsixC 8y ago

Aka 16% of the total budget.

rayiner 8y ago

Both "federal" and "discretionary" are weasel qualifiers that attempt to make military spending look artificially large. For one thing, defense is one of the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing--you would expect defense to account for a disproportionately large fraction of "federal" expenditures. (And it makes for misleading comparisons to countries with unified governments, where military spending is reported as a percentage of all government spending.) For another thing, many expenditures are mandatory rather than discretionary, for good reason. Peoples' social security checks shouldn't vary from year-to-year based on government finances. That doesn't mean that social security spending should be ignored when you're looking at the percentage of government spending that goes to the military. Total government expenditures in the U.S. is $7.65 trillion. The military budget is less than 8% of that. We're on the higher side, but that's less than for example India or Singapore. As a percentage of GDP we're at 3.1%, which is again on the high side but not crazy out of line. France is at 2.3%, and the NATO target for Europe is 2%. In the early 1990s, France and UK were spending the same percentage of GDP as the U.S. is spending now (over 3%). I remember people talking about Seinfeld and Friends back then, but not about how the U.K. and France were crazy out-of-control with their military spending.

vkou 8y ago
> Both "federal" and "discretionary" are weasel qualifiers that attempt to make military spending look artificially large. > For one thing, defense is one of the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing And "Defense" is a weasel qualifier that attempts to make military spending look artificially necessary. Most military expenditures are not for defensive purposes.
JamesBarney 8y ago
> defense is one of the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing Most people agree the government should also be providing some type of insurance i.e. social safety net.(social security, medicare) Also where are you getting the 7.65 trillion number from? Most numbers I've seen were close to 4 trillion see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...
- harryh 8y ago
  Federal government spending is about 4 trillion. 7.65 is Fed + State + Local.
avar 8y ago
> "federal" and "discretionary" are weasel qualifiers that attempt to make military spending look artificially large[...] It's not just a weasel qualifier. There is mandatory military spending in the US, e.g. pensions paid to retired members of the military. Considering pensions paid to veterans a part of military spending is the norm, e.g. NATO's % GDP numbers take that into account for all its members. > For one thing, defense is one of the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing[..] Sure, but the extent to which it does it is largely discretionary. It's mostly a political decision to keep spending more today as a percentage of GDP than the US was doing in the 1930s[1], or to name an example closer to the current day more than was being spent on September 10th, 2001. 1. https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1792_2010USp_11s1lo011lcn_30f https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1792_201...
- rayiner 8y ago
  > It's not just a weasel qualifier. There is mandatory military spending in the US, e.g. pensions paid to retired members of the military. So? When you're talking about how the military budget is too big, how does it make sense to exclude all the mandatory social spending from the calculation? > Sure, but the extent to which it does it is largely discretionary. That's not the point. Because defense is one of the few things the federal government is supposed to do, looking only at the federal budget will always make defense spending seem artificially large. You see people say stuff like "the U.S. spends more on defense than education!" In fact, we spend more on K-12 alone than defense--it's just that the education spending shows up in the $3.5 trillion of non-federal spending. We spend almost as much on infrastructure as on the military, a fact that is again obscured if you're looking only at the federal budget.
  - avar 8y ago
    I wasn't trying to refute your larger point that quoting some arbitrary part of a government's total % of GDP spending is mostly meaningless. I was saying that your claim that "discretionary" in "discretionary military spending" is a weasel qualifier is wrong, because that part of the budget is meaningfully broken down into discretionary and non-discretionary spending. You can decide to scale active military personnel up and down, you can't (as easily) decide to stop paying military pensions. > [...]defense is one of the few things the federal government is supposed to do[...] So you keep saying, but the upthread comment is clearly about how much is being spent on that topic. Just because there's a law saying a certain part of the government is entrusted with a given task doesn't mean it's not meaningful to discuss how much needs to be spent on that task.

manfredo 8y ago

Federal discretionary spending is a very specific type of spending. Overall, military budget has consumed a shrinking percentage of GDP overall. From around 11% in the 1950s to around 4% today: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/DoD-GDP-chart.png https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/DoD-GDP-chart.png

gingerbread-man 8y ago

That's a rather misleading statement. Discretionary spending makes up less than a third of the federal budget. Defense spending works out to about 15% of federal spending overall. Confusion seems to arise because mandatory spending programs (like social security, medicare, medicaid, and the VA) are budgeted separately, as is the interest paid on federal government debt. The United States spent $609 billion on defense last year. Surely it's possible to make the case for DOD cutbacks without misleading statistics.