does united states spend more money on the military than it does on social programs ?

[undercutter2006]

i got involved with a debate in another online forum where i am trying to argue that the reason our taxes are so high is that we spend much more tax money on the military than we do on social programs, so when conservatives try to argue that we should cut spending by cutting social programs they are being somewhat untruthfull

does anybody have any links/statistics to help me out in this particular discussion?

of course i am gonna look around the internet and find something on my own, just wondering if somebody who is educated on that issue here can help me out right of the top of their head

thank :)

[babylonsister]

1. YES! I don't have a link at the moment, but assuredly. nt

[sjdnb]

2. Oh, Yeah ...

But many people don't want you to know that so they hide it in volumes of budgetary data that they've made a pain in the a$$ to retreive.

Fact is, our country spends way more on defense than any other country in the world. And, all the social programs combined for multiple years do not come close to what we have spent on defense/war mongering - even before Iraq.

[undercutter2006]

3. here is what the person i was argued with just posted

http://www.gao.gov/financial/fy2007/finstatement.pdf

U.S. General Accounting Office

Financial Statements
of the United States Government
for the Years Ended September 30, 2007,
and September 30, 2006

take a look at page 7

Statement of Net Cost
Net Cost YE 9/30/07

Dept of Health & Human Services- $666.8B
Dept of Defense- $664.5B
Social Security Administration- $626.1B



http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget.../pdf/08msr.pdf

Take a look at Chart 4 (12 of 52):

Mid-Session Review
Budget of the U.S. Government 2008
Federal Outlays 2007

Total $2.779T

Social Security- 20.9%
Medicaid- 20.4%
Defense Discretionary- 20.1%
Non-defense Discretionary- 18.5%
Other- 11.7%
Interest- 8.5%

Now what were you saying about military spending? 50% or something like that?

[hootinholler]

22. That's the budget...

Does it include all the extra billions for the GWOT?

-Hoot

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Nope. Socal Security gets the biggest cut.

Now let's see the Republicans try to eliminate SocSoc!

--p!

[undercutter2006]

6. yeah just looking through those raw numbers

social securing takes about the third in taxed

a damn good program too

but combined with other social programs in make it over half of the taxes going to social prorams

but just barely

so yeah, looking at those numbers social programs do take more from our taxes than defense (offense) spending, unless you discount social security/medicare

[Dogmudgeon]

7. The economics of war, though, is pretty harsh

Giving money to people keeps it in active circulation. The military is a mix of human and capital spending. Paying the troops is economically positive, but all that spending for materiel is a huge sunk cost. And there is an enormous amount of inflation in the military contracting system.

Plus, a lot of money for this war is off-budget and hidden. But we are going to pay for it; yes, indeed. The de facto loss of 50% of the Dollar's value since Bush took office is only the start of it.

--p!

[Sadie4629]

20. About the materiel . . .

Someone has to build it. Defense contracts, even in peacetime, provide much needed jobs, and those wages are paid with Defense Dept. $$$.

Don't know if the Manitowoc Company is still around, but they paid big dollars to blue collar workers, as late as the 70's and 80's. When defense spending gets cut, families there, and in other defense-funded companies, are hurt.

[cynatnite]

5. Are you including the costs of the war?

If I remember right, the money for the war is separate from the pentagon budget.

[Pastiche423]

8. Here's a start

http://archive.seacoastonline.com/news/10232006/nhnews-ph-por-OreoMobile.html

Phil Donahue had Ben Cohen, formally of Ben and Jerry's, on describing his "Oreomobile". This, I believe was in 2002.

On the show, which I taped, Ben used oreos to demonstrate what categories our government spends on. Each Oreo represented $10 billion, and the Pentagon had 46 Oreos in its stack -- representing its $460 billion budget.

I'm still searching for the graph showing all expenditures.

On Edit:

[Viva_La_Revolution]

14. marvelous!

I saw him demonstrate that once on TV, but I didn't know who he was... Thanks!

[Pastiche423]

16. You're welcome

I miss that show and am glad I thought to tape some episodes.

[Hekate]

9. Look up one of those pie chart illustrating the budget. Right away you see 50% is defense related...

And that 50% is just the beginning, because there's a whole lot of other money that keeps flowing toward stuff related to the military and defense contractors, but it's kind of spread around and hidden in other places. Like the spy programs.

Basically, when you look at the pie chart what you see is that over half of your tax money goes for war (or whatever you want to call it), and that ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING ELSE comes out of what is left. Roads, forests, schools, bridges, hospitals, public buildings, teachers and nurses, infrastructure, social programs, education, cops, art, music, drug rehabilitation .... every other government service and program is left fighting over the crumbs that are left after "defense."

It took me awhile to realize, but the truth is this: our President and Congress can afford to do anything necessary for the people, but choose not to. The money is there. We pay more in taxes and get less back than anyone else in the civilized world. We could have top of the line education for all. We could have excellent health care for all. We could have Social Security that really takes care of our old people. We could have veterans' benefits that really take care of our veterans.

But no. We are told the money is not there. The only reason the money is not there is that it is sliced right off the top, and we are left fighting over the crumbs.

Hekate

[laconicsax]

10. Technically, no.

Last year, there was about $37 billion more budgeted Social Security than the Defense Department, so technically no. Supplemental military spending (not originally budgeted) was about $70 billion, making the DoD the winner. If you add the supplemental spending to their original budget, you have about $619 billion for the DoD.

Here comes the next "technically no."

Even at $619 billion, the DoD received less funding than Medicare ($395 billion), Welfare ($367 billion), Medicaid ($276 billion), and Veterans' benefits ($73 billion) combined. Those are all technically social programs, so technically, we spend more on social programs than the military.

If you compare the DoD with other departments not already mentioned, the DoD gets more money than all the others combined.

[2hip]

11. Yes and the disproportion is shocking

"...seventy cents of every income-tax dollar goes to pay for past, present, and future wars. Education gets two cents.

"As Michael Parenti has pointed out, the cost of military aircraft parts and ammunition kept in storage by the Pentagon is greater than the combined federal spending on pollution control, conservation, community development, housing, occupational safety, and mass transportation all put together. And the US Navy spends more money in its never ending development of a submarine rescue vehicle than is spent for public libraries, occupational safety, and daycare centers combined.”

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/12/somewhere_a_ban.html




              Edwards '08 tees!

[Echo In Light]

21. Thanks

[Fleshdancer]

12. Google gave me this:

http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2005/edition_04-10-2005/featured_0

Where Does Your Tax Money Go?

* Military: 21%
* Social Security: 20%
* Medicare & Medicaid: 20%
* Other: 19%
* National Debt Interest: 12%
* Major Social-Aid Programs: 8%

On edit: from businessweek:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/apr2007/db20070413_898070.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives

How Uncle Sam Spends Your Tax Money
There's been a surge of spending in recent years for the military and health-care programs—along with ballooning payments on the national debt

On Apr. 5 the left-leaning, Massachusetts-based National Priorities Project released a study called Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go? focusing on this discretionary chunk of spending. The median income for a U.S. family—defined as a household of one or more related persons—is about $46,500 a year, and the average federal tax bill is about $7,300. Of that, there's about $3,376 in discretionary federal income taxes, according to the project's analysis of data from the Office of Management & Budget.

The analysis reveals that the biggest share of discretionary tax dollars for that median tax bill—$1,014, or 31 cents per dollar—goes toward Pentagon spending and military-related debt service. Of the 2006 budget, $510 billion was spent on the Defense Dept., plus $32 billion for the Homeland Security Dept. The Defense figure is up about 75% since 2001.

The increases in military spending come as the American public is becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the war in Iraq. "Military spending this year is the highest it's been since World War II," says Pamela Schwartz, communications director for the National Priorities Project. "And to pay is to borrow, so spending spirals further. When Americans find this out, there is a shock and awe in the air; not enough people have the opportunity to trace the money they're giving up."

[riverdeep]

13. It all depends on how you measure it.

Your master debater was probably using the following, commonly used graph-



According to this, most spending is for social services. Note: 'income security' will be referred to as 'welfare', and they will call social services 'social programs'.

"The pie chart (above) is the government view of the budget. This is a distortion of how our income tax dollars are spent because it includes Trust Funds (e.g., Social Security), and the expenses of past military spending are not distinguished from nonmilitary spending."



The above chart does not include trust funds. I would like to see a more thorough breakdown in specifics, but it's a place to start.

"The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller."

Charts, and quotes from the following:

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

I would add that agencies like the CIA have budgets that are classified for years (although supposedly reviewed by other agencies). 'Black ops' and other covert expenditures likely are well hidden and prone to creative accounting and expand the true military budget even further. Who knows how many operations are being funded by Afghani opium.

[Hekate]

23. Bingo. That second chart is very much like the one I saw that blew me away....

...and that was from another source. Thanks for finding this.

Hekate

[undercutter2006]

15. hey, thanks a lot

for the charts and the links

it did shut up the person i was arguing with, it also made us both realize that the global financial world is pretty complex and doesn't operate along the liberal/conservative lines all the time

[and-justice-for-all]

17. You can bet your cookies they do...

and the have actually cut many programs to support their warmongering.

[MiniMe]

18. Because there is no profit to be made in social programs

and tons of money to be made with military contracts.

[Tesha]

19. Keep this pie chart handy.

Keep this pie chart handy. And if you put it on your
car in NH, you may win a year's worth of Ben and Jerry's
ice cream!

http://prioritiesnh.com/message/budget_analysis.php

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Tesha

[riverdeep]

24. Thinking about this further,

every once in a while I get into a strange idealistic what if? daydream. And looking at what we, and the world, focus on is disheartening. Imagine if we spent most of our resources tackling the big problems of humanity, if we invested most heavily in education, and in science. Imagine if we treated EVERY child that came into this world as if they were a miracle and a genius at something, and it was our job to figure out what. If finding ways of getting along was considered a heroic act, and honored as such. If all the time and effort and resources we spend squabbling over what often is labels, were spent on actualizing and unleashing the talents that every average person possesses...

I know aggression is part of the human animal, just like every animal, but periods of history like the Enlightenment, or the 1960's, indicate that maybe it won't remain a daydream forever.