Can we cut military spending more?
In discussions with my friends about the rising cost of medicare and medicaid the idea of just cutting military spending to pay for government programs frequently comes up. I always think this is a bad justification. Even if we could cut spending, that doesn't justify inefficiencies in spending that lead to higher costs, and there are less painful solutions out there (that might require more political capital, but that's what discussions are for). But lets grant that cutting military spending is something we want to do. How much is there really to cut? We constantly here from the DoD that they need more money, although that's what we hear from every government agency. I decided to actually look at some numbers. Turns out that military spending has proportionally become less and less of discretionary spending, even after Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex" speech. Going from 73% of outlays in 1962 (the first year data is available, even before the Gulf ...