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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zzpat who wrote (69626)	5/3/2018 12:30:28 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 358007

The percentage of the budget is rather important to the question of "what's driving overspending and increasing deficits". Its the key bit of information for that question. For the question how much can we afford to pay on defense, then the percentage of GDP is more important than the percentage of the budget, but its far from the only bit of information you would need, information about the debt, interest rates (to the extent you can have any real idea about what future interest rates are going to be), economic growth, other priorities etc would all be needed. Both percentages are relevant but less important, to the question of how much we should pay for defense. If defense spending as a percentage of the budget is relatively high but your in a situation like WWII, it might not be high enough. If the percentage is low, but you face no real external threats now or for the foreseeable future it might still be too high.