Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The DoD/Pentagon spends 69 times more than the EPA. Guess which one Trump wants to cut. . .
President Donald Trump is proposing to increase defense spending by $54 billion while slashing the budgets the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States Agency for International Development. Trump has called his plan, which he will officially unveil tonight at a speech before Congress, "a landmark event, a message to the world, in these dangerous times, of American strength, security and resolve."
Trump campaigned on a promise to increase the Pentagon's budget and reverse the Obama administration's alleged "hollowing out" of the military. Yet a look at the numbers shows that while military spending has been decreasing due to bipartisan budget caps and the drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defense Department is still getting more money than it has at any time since the end of World War II. Its 2016 budget was more than $600 billion. In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, it was $569 billion (in current dollars).
And while Trump says increased military spending will reassert America's strength, the United States already is the world's 800-pound gorilla. In 2015, it was responsible for more than one third of all military spending on the planet. China and Russia, the United States' main military competitors, don't even come close.
Trump campaigned on a promise to increase the Pentagon's budget and reverse the Obama administration's alleged "hollowing out" of the military. Yet a look at the numbers shows that while military spending has been decreasing due to bipartisan budget caps and the drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defense Department is still getting more money than it has at any time since the end of World War II. Its 2016 budget was more than $600 billion. In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, it was $569 billion (in current dollars).
And while Trump says increased military spending will reassert America's strength, the United States already is the world's 800-pound gorilla. In 2015, it was responsible for more than one third of all military spending on the planet. China and Russia, the United States' main military competitors, don't even come close.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/trump-pentagon-military-budget-spending-charts