Your Income Taxes Fund More Defense Spending Than the Next 15 Countries Combined

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Posted by booman at 7:21 am
July 15, 2010

Your Income Taxes Fund More Defense Spending Than the Next 15 Countries Combined
Posted by booman on @ 7:21 am


This post originally appeared on Booman Tribune.

What does all the income taxes collected (as opposed to FICA, etc.) get spent on? One organization has a handy pie chart which summarizes it nicely for the last Fuiscal Year, 2009:

Here’s how they arrive at those figures:

Current military” includes Dept. of Defense ($653 billion), the military portion from other departments ($150 billion), and an additional $162 billion to supplement the Budget’s misleading and vast underestimate of only $38 billion for the “war on terror.” “Past military” represents veterans’ benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt.* These figures are from an analysis of detailed tables in the “Analytical Perspectives” book of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2009. The figures are federal funds, which do not include trust funds — such as Social Security — that are raised and spent separately from income taxes. What you pay (or don’t pay) by April 15, 2008, goes to the federal funds portion of the budget. 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.*Analysts differ on how much of the debt stems from the military; other groups estimate 50% to 60%. We use 80% because we believe if there had been no military spending most (if not all) of the national debt would have been eliminated.

However you slice it, your income taxes fund more defense spending than the next 15 countries in the world combined (and yes, that includes China and Russia). Which means of course that as a Responsible Republican you can only propose that we must extend the Bush tax cuts, cut off unemployment benefits and raise the the retirement age to 70 for Social Security. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/15/your-income-taxes-fund-more-defense-spending-than-the-next-15-countries-combined/

[LWolf]

1. "Defense" is not the right word, is it?

It goes to the Department of War.