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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (372178)	2/27/2008 2:58:15 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575119

Since we are talking about the Federal Budget then lets use their definition. Fine we can use that term of art rather than the ordinary definition if you want. But if we do 1 - I also answered that point. and 2 - The distinction isn't very meaningful in this context. Spending is spending. I don't care nearly as much about "percentage of discretionary spending" as I do about "percentage of spending". Do you have some data that military spending is down as a percentage of discretionary spending? Table 2: US military spending as a percentage of discretionary spending, 1962--2003 truthandpolitics.org In that period it goes down from 72.9 to 49 percent. If you look before that period it would be even larger during the Korean War (and probably not all that far away from 100% during WWII) Since 2003 military spending has increased, but so has discretionary spending on non military items. The percentage would still be below the levels under Reagan, Bush I, or even the beginning of the Clinton administration (54.2). As I said before the trend is not nearly so dramatic as when you include all government spending. But its hardly the case the military spending is the main driver of spending even if you ignore entitlements and debt service. And at the least entitlements should not be ignored. And are tax receipts on the dedicated taxes of entitlement programs not also up? They are but its irrelevant. Congress could double them tomorrow and the spending wouldn't be less of a burden, or it could half them and the spending wouldn't cost more.