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 of Tonkin incident) to about 51% in 2020, a 20% drop.

 

source: Office of Management and Budget. 2021. Historical Tables. Table 8.8, “Outlays for Discretionary Programs in Constant (FY 2012) Dollars: 1962–2025”

At the same time discretionary spending has become a smaller and smaller part of the overall budget, especially with the rise of medicare, medicaid and social security. So what really is the proportion left to cut from the military? Take a look

source: Office of Management and Budget. 2021. Historical Tables. Table 14.4, “Total Government Expenditures by Major Category of Expenditure: 1948–2019”

This is happening while medicare/medicaid/social security seems to be on the rise. 

source: ibid

It seems to me that we can't keep cutting military spending for much longer. We need ways to grow the pie instead of focusing on how to cut it up.