MILITARY SPENDING A NATIONAL CANCER AND DECEPTION IN DC

The US military budget is way over the top. We spend more for so called "defense" than any other nation on earth. And our "defense" expenditures are growing like a cancer enlarging and metastasizing so rapidly, just the cost of servicing the debt alone will consume its host. But the American people would never know. Republican and most Democrat members of Congress in Washington, the Pentagon, and the military prefer to deceive the public regarding our true spending in this category. Indeed, this year the Republican and Democrat candidates for President all continue to call for a laughable EXPANSION of military spending, while simultaneously decry the (paltry) spending on our nation's infrastructure, and the health and welfare of its citizenry. One good reason for this situation is the lack of understanding on the part of the citizenry directly related to a very misleading and commonly displayed pie graph, called the "US Federal Budget for 2015"!

In our 10th grade math class, our good and wise mathematics teacher, Mr. Wilson, cautioned us about misuse of statistical data. He often emphasized how very easy it was to manipulate numbers to make a graph twist the truth. I am sure our math teach would just cringe over the very widely published 2015 US Federal Spending Pie Graph. It appears so informative, is easy to read, colorful and attractive. However, it is grossly misleading. I would call it an outright lie...a criminal distortion of how this nation actually spends the tax dollar of its hard working citizenry.

This misleading graph presents the right side of a large colorful circle with two big "pie cut outs", labeled "Social Security" and "Health Care". Social Security is represaented as the largest, at 24%, while Healthcare accounts for 23% . Those two "pie pieces" represent almost half of the total (or 47%) on one side of the circle. They take up just about all of the right hand side of the graph. The left hand side has smaller categories of pie, like the cuts on a pizza you might make for the little kids of a group. On this side of the circle you will find "defense" spending. It is represented as a measly slice representing only 16% of the total. The overall impression the graph leaves its observer is that our leaders in Washington apparently have crafted a budget in which the the welfare of our citizens is paramount. It attempts to portray our nation, one which spends more than any other in the world on so called "defense", rather as a cuddly, socially responsive, Nordic European, peace-loving, home-grooming nation which cares so much about the health and welfare of its citizenry that it spends half of its tax income annually on healthcare and social benefits. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The real cost of military related spending is very different. Yes, the Defense Department has a 2015 budget of about $610 billion, (that is about 16% of our budget) but that is only about HALF of what is actually spent on military hardware, personnel and military related debt service. The actual total costs of our military is more than $1.2 trillion dollars annually. That is nearly a full ONE THIRD of our budget and the largest chunk out of our budget. That is something the Washington crowd would rather not have you know.

Those pie-graph artists in Washington know how to obscure the facts. Mr. Wilson would have loved to have been able to use them as an example of what NOT to do with a pie graph if you wanted to actually represent the truth. Those in Washington are more interested in deception. They would prefer the US citizen does not know how we really spend our hard won tax dollars.

The pie graph makers took a good half of the "defense related" costs AND SPREAD THEM OUT among other budget categories to obscure the facts.

The pie graph category "Defense" does NOT include:

1.Service on Debt Defense Related Interest on Loans (remember those Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars we fought and payed for "on the cuff".) Add in $400 billion dollars annually for this component to our "defense spending".

2. Veteran's Affairs. Add about $180 billion to the Defense budget to pay for the needs of veterans who served in our wars, of those receiving care related to their grievous wounds and the care and welfare of those that those who fell in battle left behind. The following all have defense related activities which are misleadingly spread over into other categories:

3. State Department. Defense Related Activities 4. Homeland Security Defense related /activities 5. Energy Department Defense Related Activities (those atomic bombs need to be cared for too)

A fair appraisal of the the costs of the military component indicates that were we to add up all of these costs, our total, real world, so called "defense" expenditures to taxpayers is closer to two times, or one hundred percent greater than what is indicated in the misleading US Spending Pie Graph, or about $1.2 trillion dollars!

It is noteworthy to underscore the fact that the interest on defense related loans which cost us now about $400 billion annually is more than we spend on the Energy Department, State Department. Homeland Security and Federal Defense Related Law Enforcement.

In fact just to service the debt on past military expenditures and adventures abroad, (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya) and the veterans affairs costs related to those past unwise adventures now amount to almost $580 billion or very close to the misleading DIRECT DEFENSE COSTS ($610 billion) the Defense Department spends annually.

That is the amount we spend each year out of the annual income of about $3.9 trillion dollars in tax and other revenues. We spend more than 30% of our income....Military spending is the biggest component of our budget.

The decision to spend so prolifically on military has its consequences. With a good third cut out of the budget for military expenses, the remaining two-thirds is just not enough for the excellent schools, health care, infrastructure, and broadband that other nations of our wealth level offer to their citizens.

When we ask why our nation's bridges, roads, tunnels, railroads, broadband, and all its infrastructure is crumbling into Third World levels of decay, and our citizens live shorter, more disease ridden lives than other nations of our wealth you can look toward the over the top, bloated defense budget and the purposeful misrepresentation of our actual spending preferences by the Washington crowd and their enablers in the pie graph publishing house.