Military programs and valued domestic spending programs are competing for the same taxpayers' dollars...and the Pentagon is winning! Despite talk about declining military spending and suggestions that the military has taken its "fair share" of spending cuts, military spending still consumes a huge chunk of federal government funds. And the military budget continues to be kept "off the table" in the budget balancing efforts of both the President and the Congress.
In the President's proposed federal budget for Fiscal Year 1997, the "National Defense" category of federal spending (excluding veterans programs and other military-related spending) amounts to a whopping 51 percent of all discretionary spending, the money the President and Congress must decide and act to spend each year. The other category of federal spending is mandatory spending, the money that the Federal Government spends automatically -- unless the President and Congress change the laws that govern it. Mandatory spending includes entitlements, money or benefits provided directly to individuals, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Federal Retirement. It also includes interest payments on the national debt.
Prepared by Martin Calhoun and Kathryn Schultz, Senior Research Analysts, March 25, 1996.
Sources: Office of Management and Budget, CDI.