The US Defense Budget creating shock waves
February 11, 2008
Recently, a very big argument has broken out based the issue of the size of the 2009 budget the pentagon has come up with. The hot tissue that got a lot or attention was the very large defense budget that was recommended. In retort, the defense secretary Robert Gates argued that the military budget of $515.4 billion which is 3.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product is nothing compared to what the budget was in the previous years. He said that it was a bargain by the standards that have been set till now. As an explanation he said that during the times at which the country was at war the percentage of GDP that goes for defense was usually high. He laid out the statistics which said that the percentage of GDP that went for defense during the time US was at war with Korea was 14 percent and during the period of Vietnam war, it was 9 percent.
Anyhow, the critics did not feel the same way as Mr. Secretary and went on to measure the magnitude of this year’s defense budget with a completely different yardstick. What they found out was that this year’s defense budget formulated by the pentagon was an all time high. The New York Times editorial page even went on to say on the 2nd of February that the 2009 defense budget, even after adjusting to inflation, the maximum amount will be spent for military purposes since World War II.
So, the question that the people are trying to figure out now is whether the defense budget would turn out to be a bargain or a burden. The interesting thing about the defense secretary’s words is that he feels that the country is at war. However, the citizens of the country are certainly not feeling like that. Since not a single thing in the country is rationed, number of causalities are relatively few and the problem of waging wars is completely restricted to less than 2 percent of Americans that are part of the US military force there is nothing happening to suggest that the country is at war. So the statement made by the defense secretary becomes all the more intriguing. Are his words suggesting something?
It is only fair for the tax payers of the country to get a bit scratchy when they are asked to spend this much amount of money just for defense next year. The reason why they get more confused is because the defense budget, the pentagon has come up with recently does not include the various major issues like that of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is another funny part of the US defense budget. They have always omitted some items from the defense budget. Nuclear weapons can be taken for an example; they fall under a completely different section known as the Department of Energy. The pentagon also mentioned that it is not planning to cut down on the weapons this time and this is the other reason as to why the budget was a bit high this time.
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