pie_in_brief

Explaining the budget pie

The "elevator speech"

The pie chart represents the federal "discretionary" budget. That's 1/3 of the total federal budget, but it's the piece that Congress totally controls, so it's a real reflection of their spending priorities.

You could think of it as Congress's checkbook, and just like your family checkbook does, it says a lot about the values of the people spending the money. More than half of the discretionary budget ($504 billion this year) goes to the Pentagon, while education, health care, the environment and other needs get relatively tiny slices.

The Priorities campaign thinks Congress's priorities are out of whack. And military experts -- including generals, admirals and a former CIA director -- say the Pentagon wastes $60 billion (the slice with the dotted line) on obsolete Cold War weapons and a stockpile of 10,000 nuclear weapons that would be better spent on other domestic priorities."

Back at ya

Here are some responses you might get, and how to answer them:

"I'm for the military. I don't think we do enough for our soldiers."

We absolutely agree. It's a shame that we treat our veterans so shabbily after they've put their lives on the line for us. That's why we want to scrap weapons that don't work or that we'll never use (10,000 nukes?) and use the money for health care for veterans and their families. We want to invest in renewable energy, so American troops aren't fighting and dying for oil. We want to strength our homeland security. These are meaningful ways of supporting our troops."

"We're not spending enough on defense! Only 4 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) goes to defense. That's as low as it's been since World War 2."

So it's OK if your tax dollars are wasted because the rest of the economy is strong? We're talking about waste that has been identified by military experts -- pure political pork and a stockpile of 10,000 nuclear weapons.

Gross domestic product measures the strength of our economy. It says nothing about the threats to our national security, nor what we need to combat them. If the stock market crashes or we enter a recession and the GDP declines, should we then reduce the military budget accordingly?

(Background for number wonks: According to Chris Hellman at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, in “real” (inflation adjusted) terms, the Fiscal Year 2008 defense budget request of $481.4 billion – which does not include an additional $200 billion for support military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is more than 25 percent above the Cold War average and nearly equal to the high-water mark of the Reagan-era buildup. And this for a military one-third smaller than it was in 1990.

Also, since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, annual defense spending, not including funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, has grown by $120 billion in real terms, an increase of 34 percent. That the Pentagon budget accounts for a smaller percentage of GDP is a result of the fact that the U.S. economy has been growing even faster – 44 percent over the same period.)

More Priorities budget analysis.

PrioritiesNH, 194 North Main St., Suite 3, Concord, NH 03301
(603) 224-3800 -- fax (603) 224-3818