Social spending goes directly into almost every sector of the national economy, while defense spending goes into a single, small sector.

Social spending by government is every bit as effective as money put into the economy by “free markets” it simply gets there by another route. Once a social security check gets sent to an individual, once a disability check gets given to a diabled person, it immediately enters the market economy at many levels. housing, food, consumer items, the bulk of the national economy, all benefit from Social Spending while the effect of defense spending is much, much more limited.

This is the breakdown of the 2009 budget allocations by Congress:

Current Military
$965 billion:
• Military Personnel $129 billion
• Operation & Maint. $241 billion
• Procurement $143 billion
• Research & Dev. $79 billion
• Construction $15 billion
• Family Housing $3 billion
• DoD misc. $4 billion
• Retired Pay $70 billion
• DoE nuclear weapons $17 billion
• NASA (50%) $9 billion
• International Security $9 billion
• Homeland Secur. (military) $35 billion
• State Dept. (partial) $6 billion
• other military (non-DoD) $5 billion
• “Global War on Terror” $200 billion [We added $162 billion to the last item to supplement the Budget’s grossly underestimated $38 billion in “allowances” to be spent in 2009 for the “War on Terror,” which includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan]

Past Military,
$484 billion:
• Veterans’ Benefits $94 billion
• Interest on national debt (80%) created by military spending, $390 billion

Human Resources
$789 billion:
• Health/Human Services
• Soc. Sec. Administration
• Education Dept.
• Food/Nutrition programs
• Housing & Urban Dev.
• Labor Dept.
• other human resources.

General Government
$304 billion:
• Interest on debt (20%)
• Treasury
• Government personnel
• Justice Dept.
• State Dept.
• Homeland Security (15%)
• International Affairs
• NASA (50%)
• Judicial
• Legislative
• other general govt.

Physical Resources
$117 billion:
• Agriculture
• Interior
• Transportation
• Homeland Security (15%)
• HUD
• Commerce
• Energy (non-military)
• Environmental Protection
• Nat. Science Fdtn.
• Army Corps Engineers
� Fed. Comm. Commission
• other physical resources

Past military spending alone accounts for 80 percent of the interest on the national debt. This largely consists of the amount that has to be borrowed to provide veterans benefits.

The only generational spending that is caused by Social Security and Medicare is the fact that rather than save the current surpluses, the government “borrows” them to fund other aspects of government, largely, defense. with a promise to pay it back,with interest, just the same way that when the government borrows money from China, it promises to pay it back with interest.

The vast majority of the national debt is the result of decades of reckless borrowing in order to lower income taxes in order to pay for the total of past and current defense budgets. The percent that income taxes make up of government revenues are not even large enough to fund past and current defense obligations. That is, the government would STILL have to borrow in order to pay for non-discretionary portions of the budget.

Americans once had the spine to face a challenge, as we did when the Russians beat us into space with the first satellite and the first man in space, we turned around and gave them the first man on the moon. At least until Reagan converatives took over. Less than 11 years after the Russians launched the first Sputnik, we put a man on the moon.

Now we are reduced to thumbing rides into space with the Russians. The Cold War MAY have destroyed the Soviet Union, but Russia is now an oil superpower, and the United States has to import its energy. The United States won the political cold war, but Russia won it economically,jusat as Japan and Germany won WWII economically.

We can always rely on conservatives to not make the difficult choices and take those temporary tempting routes that save money in the short term, but cost by every other measure in the long term.

May 11th, 2009
6:49 am

Let’s hope you’re right. But I’m afraid that the reason the Shiia want us to leave is so they can really go after the Sunni.

This is one of the reasons things have quietened down:

http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/iraq?page=intro

I wish he had been concerned about Islamic terrorism from the beginning of his administration, when he was warned about it. Instead, he waited till after 9/11. And you praise him…. amazing….

We’ll know soon enough. My bet is that they’ll do fine. The last elections showed that the vast majority of the people there want to have a strong government. We’ve done our work there. Time to find out if they can do theirs.

May 11th, 2009
6:08 am

Wrong! I provided you with this link:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/857bstgi.asp

Not exactly a liberal rag.