Edit: Forgot to include military spending by non-DoD federal agencies.

The relevant comparison is the size of the federal budget, because that's the money the government controls, and can allocate. The GNP is a measure of the total value of goods and services produced by that country. The federal government can't allocate more money to healthcare because a factory sold a million extra TVs that year. (Beyond what they collect in taxes, which do end up in the federal budget.)

In 2007, we will spend $2.8 trillion. $244 billion gets taken right out, because it's interest on the debt, and therefore money we don't really have. Defense spending, military spending by non-DoD sources, and veterans' affairs total $653 billion of what remains, which is 25% of the total money we can spend. I'm being kind and pretending that we won't overspend the budget, even though the Iraq War has constantly done so for years, and will probably overspend by $100B (add +4% to above figure) in 2007 alone.

$653B is a ridiculous amount of money. We could more than triple our R&D budget (currently $25B) by slicing defense spending by a tenth. Your implication that the military budget is insignificant in the spending picture is completely laughable.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com