posted 01-22-2004 08:56 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by JerseyBluEyz:
Wow! That is some project you're undertaking! Good for you and good luck.

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I have my Federal Budget Database system basically done now, including the ability to allocate interest to defense based on how much of the previous debt is from previous defense spending--the rest of the interest is considered domestic spending (since it is interest on the portion of the debt generated from domestic spending).

I cannot verify what the article above says because he's moved so much federal spending around in ways that the federal budget is not broken down such that there's really no way to verify his work. It's also not clear whether the agencies that are now part of DHS (and which he considers part of defense) were also considered part of defense when he tried to calculate the portion of the existing debt that was defense-related.

Anyway, detailed receipts and spending information are available for every federal budget from 1940 on. Based on this information it is possible to determine the budget deficit for each year. It is also possible to calculate what percentage of the budget each year was defense spending and what percentage was non-defense spending. Based on the percentage of defense and non-defense spending each year, the deficit for that year is split between "defense deficit" or "domestic deficit." The total defense debt and total domestic debt is then increased by those amounts, respectively.

The fact that information is only available from 1940 on is not significant since prior to 1940 the federal debt was only $42 billion so it's not terribly important how the $42 billion that existed in 1940 is allocated since it's such a small number.

To make a long story short... From 1940 through 2003, 32.2% of the federal budget was spent on defense (including interest on previous defense spending) and 67.8% was spent on non-defense spending (including interest on previous non-defense spending).

As of a few days ago, the federal debt hit $7 trillion. Of the current debt, $2.254 trillion can be blamed on defense spending and $4.746 trillion can be blamed on domestic and social spending.

Also, despite the seemingly large defense budget in 2003, as a percentage of GDP it is actually less than it was throughout the Clinton administration except for 1999 and 2000. That is to say, as a percentage of GDP, Clinton spent more money on defense every year he was in office except for his last two years than Bush did in 2003.