To make federal spending on defense and security more effective and cost efficient, a task force managed by the Institute for Foreign Policy last month recommended a unified security budget that would pull together spending on offense (military forces), defense (homeland security), and prevention (nonmilitary international engagement). As it is, the proposed $623 billion military budget for fiscal 2008 will mean a higher military bill (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than at any time since World War II.
If your going to include all security spending I guess you'd also toss in the CIA, FBI, federal marshalls, aid to local and state police forces and national guards, etc.
I have no objection to the idea, I'm just not sure its very useful. Its similar to lumping together social security, medicare, medicaid, all forms of welfare payments and some other programs and calling it the social budget. Nothing objectionable about it, but it doesn't change the reality of the spending. Perhaps the current budget (in real dollars) for the military is the most since WWII, but the "social budget" would be vastly more than it WWII.
To get an idea of how they have changed over time see
that's as a percentage of national income, if you change it to real dollars then the military spending line would be higher now then in Korea, but the social spending line would be so high you couldn't fit a monitor that could display it in your house or office. If it was represented by a rigid line made of solid material you would probably have to put one of those blinking aircraft warning lights on it. |
