I got curious about our national budget, googled around looking for a pie-chart and found this chart at an anti-war website. The numbers are pretty staggering and explain why military spending is such an important topic of discussion when we consider how we are going to pay down the national debt which is now in the trillions. Anyone out there have a better pie-chart? I'll use it if you do.
US Budget
I got curious about our national budget, googled around looking for a pie-chart and found this chart at an anti-war website. The numbers are pretty staggering and explain why military spending is such an important topic of discussion when we consider how we are going to pay down the national debt which is now in the trillions. Anyone out there have a better pie-chart? I'll use it if you do.
9 comments:
I love to get comments and usually respond. So come back to see my reply. You can click here to see my comment policy.
Yikes; I'm having flashbacks to my former Budget committee life! I'll check and see if any of my old work charts made it onto my home hard drive; the committee's website has changed dramatically since I left, so none of my resources would still be there. Will let you know....
ReplyDelete- Matt
Military at 30% , I figure that is not bad with us being at war. I would like to see it broke donw to how much we spend on illegals.
ReplyDeleteKB,
ReplyDeleteUmm, it is only about a factor of 2 off on the percentages, but what would you expect from an anti-war site.
Try this one out:
Budget Pie Chart
God Bless
Doug
Hi Doug,
ReplyDeleteI probably should have labeled this post US Expenses rather than budget. I looked at the chart you referenced and I couldn't tell if the (unbudgeted) war expenses were factored in since it is dated FY2005. Below is the $$$ they use to compute the (antiwar) pie-chart. Not sure that I understand how they compute the interest on the national debt ... so using their numbers and not factoring interest on the national debt I come up with these percentages:
40% - ($749b) Military (past/now)
40% - ($748b) Human Resources
13% - ($225b) General Government
07% - ($131b) Physical resources
What specifically do you see that is in error with these numbers?
Thx, Bob
========
BUDGETTED: Current Military, $563 billion:
• Military Personnel $110 billion
• Operation & Maint. $162 billion
• Procurement $90 billion
• Research & Dev. $72 billion
• Construction $8 billion
• Family Housing $4 billion
• DoD misc. $4 billion
• Retired Pay $49 billion
• DoE nuclear weapons $17 billion
• NASA (50%) $8 billion
• International Security $8 billion
• Homeland Secur. (military) $27 billion
• Exec. Office of President $2 billion
• other military (non-DoD) $2 billion
UNBUDGETTED: Iraq & Afghanistan Wars
$100 billion (est.):
Most of the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is not included in the President’s Budget but the Administration will seek supplemental appropriations later this year as it has in the past three years. This is likely an underestimate.
Past Military,
$439 billion:
• Veterans’ Benefits $76 billion
• Interest on national debt $353 billion (80% est. to be created by military spending)
Human Resources, $748 billion:
• Health/Human Services
• Soc. Sec. Administration
• Education Dept.
• Food/Nutrition programs
• Housing & Urban Dev.
• Labor Dept.
• other human resources.
General Government, $281 billion:
• Interest on debt (20%)
• Treasury • Government personnel • Justice Dept.
• State Dept.
• Homeland Security (17%)
• International Affairs
• NASA (50%)
• Judicial
• Legislative
• other general govt.
Physical Resources, $131 billion:
• Agriculture
• Interior
• Transportation
• Homeland Security (17%)
• HUD
• Commerce
• Energy (non-military)
• Environmental Protection
• Nat. Science Fdtn.
• Army Corps Engineers
• Fed. Comm. Commission
• other physical resources
KB,
ReplyDeleteOops, here is the link to the 2006 fiscal budget. This is based on the budget/management reports reports that you can download from the whitehouse's own website (www.whitehouse.gov).
If you browse around the provided link, there is also the projected 2007 numbers there as well.
2006 Budget
If my memory serves me correctly, the current Interest load on our debt is about 9 percent of the total budget, but don't quote me on that.
God Bless
Doug
At this point it seems that we may be comparing apples to oranges Doug. I tried to find the raw numbers on the FY2006 expenditures on the website that you pointed me to but couldn't find them. Any idea where I can get a detailed accounting of Military expenditures like the one I included in my last comment?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bob
KB,
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to a .pdf where the budgetary numbers come from.
2006 Budget overview
If you note on page 4 of the highlights is says:
Raises overall Defense spending by 4.8 percent, or 41 percent since 2001.
This doesn't mean that Defense is 41 percent of the budget. It means that they raised spending by 41 percent. So a 4.8% increase (of the totat budget) raises the percentage of the defense budget by 41%.
So if I take 4.8 percent and divide by 0.41 I get 11.7% add this to 4.8% and I get 16.5% of the total budget is defense. Because prioroties have been shifted in the last five years, many programs have been cut to support the war effort. These percentages are comparing the 2001 budget to the 2006 budget, this number really works out to be closer to 20%.
Traditionally military and its peripheray (pension support, etc. )make up 25 percent of all money spent in any fiscal year.
Countries, such as Israel spend about 60 percent of thier budget on defense. Other countries, like Japan spend less than 10 percent. If you ask me, I think it is high time that Japan start paying more for the defense of their soil.
God Bless
Doug
Hi Doug,
ReplyDeleteThis is getting a bit frustrating. The PDF document you reference doesn't give actual numbers/dollars so I cannot compare to the numbers/dollars on the anti-war website (which I quoted a few comments ago). Do you have any actual numbers/dollars (not dollars over last years but actual dollars) allocations similar to the ones that I have quoted? Hard to compare where the numbers are off when I can't get the actual numbers.
Thanks, Bob
KB,
ReplyDeleteNope KB, I don't. Sorry. However, the pdf that provided is a government document, as oposed to a group with an agenda. Not that I trust always the gov, but I'm pretty sure that these number line up with my historic memory of the budget breakdowns.
Sorry to frustrate you!
God Bless
Doug