Military budget

“ During the fiscal years 1 July 1968 through 30 June 1973, the military budget averaged slightly under 13% of the central government budget; during fiscal years 1964 through 1967, it averaged 16.2%. In real terms -- that is, discounting inflation -- the 1972-73 military budget of US $1,474.6 million is equivalent to the 1971-72 military appropriation. This austerity budget, and the 5-year defense plan which sets defense spending at a total of $6 billion for 5 years, portends a further decline in future military budgets. Annual defense budgets are shown below. ”

“ Our final challenge is the most important: to pass a national security budget that keeps our military the best trained and best equipped in the world, with heightened readiness and 21st Century weapons; raises salaries for our service men and women; protects our veterans; fully funds the diplomacy that keeps our soldiers out of war; and makes good on our commitment to pay our UN dues and arrears. I ask you to pass this budget and I thank you for the extraordinary support you have given--Republicans and Democrats alike--to our men and women in uniform. ”

“ Defense spending accounts for less than 30 percent of our budget today - far less than 20 years ago. We've cut our planned defense buildup 3 years in a row and cut it again this year - and all this while our adversaries have raced ahead with the greatest military buildup in the history of man. ”

“ Beyond prudence, however, it is clear that without a major threat to generate consensus and to rally the country around defense and defense spending, the military posture of the United States will erode as the defense budget is cut. ”

“ And yet defense spending is less than a third of the total budget. During the years of President Kennedy and of the years before that, defense was almost half the total budget. And then came several years in which our military capability was allowed to deteriorate to a very dangerous degree. We are just now restoring, through the essential modernization of our conventional and strategic forces, our capability to meet our present and future security needs. We dare not shirk our responsibility to keep America free, secure, and at peace. ”

“ And that is why, because of rising research and development costs, because of increases in military and civilian pay, because of the need to proceed with new weapons systems, my budget for the coming fiscal year will provide for an increase in defense spending.
Strong military defenses are not the enemy of peace; they are the guardians of peace.
There could be no more misguided set of priorities than one which would tempt others by weakening America, and thereby endanger the peace of the world. ”

“ One stopgap measure that the Congress did pass in FY 2006 was the authority to transfer up to $100 million from the Pentagon to the State Department for boosting the civilian response to particular trouble spots. However, this was a one-year authority, and this money will not provide the resources necessary over the long term to improve the State Department’s capacity to be a capable partner in responding to complex emergencies.
The foreign affairs budget is always a tougher sell to Congress than the military budget. ”

“ As a permanent yearly deficit is an impossibility, as we cannot figure with security with increased tax revenues in amount balancing the deficit and any other previous debits, as on the other hand a balanced budget is the only secure basis for the impending great task of military policy. For all these reasons we have to put in motion a fundamental and conscious budget policy which solves the problem of armament financing by organic and planned reduction of other expenditures not only from the point of receipt, but also from the point of expenditure, that is, by saving. ”

“ Your loved ones will never, ever be forgotten. We will always honor their memory.Finally, to keep America safe, we must provide the men and women of the United States military with the tools they need to prevent war -- if they must -- they have to fight and they only have to win.
I am sending Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history. My budget will also increase funding for our veterans. Our veterans have delivered for this nation, and now we must deliver for them. ”

“ In the past 5 years, we have steadily reduced the burden of national defense as a share of the budget, bringing it down from 44 percent in 1969 to 29 percent in the current year. We have cut our military manpower over the past 5 years by more than a third, from 3.5 million to 2.2 million. ”

“ But instead of helping them, we continue to have a very large military budget, but we spend the smallest percentage of our income on assistance to other countries to help them succeed economically and politically of any advanced country in the world. ”

“ These figures represent only a small part of the real cost, because besides the recognized expenditure of the war budget of the various nations, we ought also to take into account the enormous loss to society involved in withdrawing from it such an immense number of its most vigorous men, who are taken from industrial pursuits and every kind of labor, as well as the enormous interest on the sums expended on military preparations without any return. The inevitable result of this expenditure on war and preparations for war is a continually growing national debt. ”

“ And this accounts for the fact well known to all financiers, that the amount of the budget remaining the same, a greater eagerness to enter the military service of the country is inspired by endowing the higher positions munificently—provided they are attainable by all—and paying the lower ones in a very niggardly way, than when the pay is made more uniform. ”

“ Further, since the government is supporting the civil war with approximately seventy per cent of its national budget, it is evident that steps taken to alleviate the situation must point toward an improvement in the effectiveness of the armed forces with a concomitant program of social, political and economic reforms, including a decrease in the size of the military establishment. ”

“ Expenditures relating to the war are still high. Considerable sums are required to alleviate world famine and suffering. Aid to veterans will continue at peak level. The world situation is such that large military expenditures are required. Interest on the public debt and certain other costs are irreducible. For these reasons I have had to practice stringent economy in preparing the budget; and I hope that the Congress will cooperate in this program of economy. ”

“ This appropriations request would provide $24.9 billion in the DOD base budget for urgent warfighting readiness needs and to begin a sustained effort to rebuild the U.S. Armed Forces. The request seeks to address critical budget shortfalls in personnel, training, maintenance, equipment, munitions, modernization, and infrastructure investment. It represents a critical first step in investing in a larger, more ready, and more capable military force. ”

“ An artist using statistics as a brush could paint two very different pictures of our country. One would have warning signs: increasing layoffs, rising energy prices, too many failing schools, persistent poverty, the stubborn vestiges of racism. Another picture would be full of blessings: a balanced budget, big surpluses, a military that is second to none, a country at peace with its neighbors, technology that is revolutionizing the world, and our greatest strength, concerned citizens who care for our country and care for each other. ”

“ Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? ”

“ Will we fund wasteful, pork barrel programs at the expense of our national defense? Will we kill off our prosperity with a tax increase? No matter how intense the political pressures become, the answer to both of these questions must and will remain an unmistakable no. Defense spending must depend not upon this or that guideline, but one consideration alone: the size of the threat with which our adversaries confront us. To sacrifice our defenses in order to balance the budget would be to abdicate the paramount duty of the Government to the people. ”

“ In all, the liberal alternative budget would approve nearly $200 billion in additional inflationary spending. Make no mistake, this money cannot be retrieved and the deficit reduced, as they claim, by slashing defense spending authority by more than $200 billion. Once you begin reducing personnel in our armed services, closing down aircraft plants, decommissioning ships, fighter squadrons, and one weapons program after another, you not only gamble with America's security, you create a new army of unemployed. ”

“ Myth number one—and I'm sure you've heard this one again and again—is that increases in defense spending in recent years are one of the main causes of projected Federal deficits. The fact is that the defense share of the Federal budget and the gross national product has been shrinking sharply over the last 20 years. ”

“ What would we say of an expenditure of half a billion dollars for defence alone! With what admiration, too, must we regard 65,000,000 people, living in an area one quarter smaller than Texas, on a by-no-means rich or fertile soil, who can bear cheerfully the burden, each year, of half our total national expenditure, merely on the military and naval barricade which enables them to toil in peace and security. ”

“ But we can also afford to spend more on our defense. Our defense budget currently consumes less than 4 cents of every dollar that our booming economy generates - far less than we spent during the Cold War. ”

“ Now, some will tell you that we're spending too much on defense, that defense spending is responsible for the deficit, but that charge is belied by the facts. The great surge in spending has been on the nondefense side of the budget. In fact, the increase in nondefense spending, including interest, has been nearly twice as great as in defense spending. My budget proposal for the next 5 years asks for a modest 3-percent real growth in defense. This is the minimum we need for a stable, consistent growth in defense that will maintain the progress we've made. ”

“ A full quarter of the so-called deficit reductions in the House budget are gimmicks like this. Most of the rest comes from raiding the national defense. There is nothing proportionate or fair in the House's budgetary assault on defense. ”

“ President Obama’s budget proposal is, I believe, the nation’s first truly 21st century defense budget. It explicitly recognizes that over the last two decades the nature of conflict has fundamentally changed – and that much of America’s defense establishment has yet to fully adapt to the security realities of the post-Cold War era and this complex and dangerous new century. ”

“ The American people know that war is looming. The Senate knows that war is looming. Yet the budget resolution before the Senate ignores that war. It ignores the obvious costs that are staring us square in the face. This Senate ought to be up front with the nation and anticipate the costs of war in this budget. ”

“ Congress must fund our troops while they're fighting a war. And Congress must provide funds to continue improving security at our airports. Congress also must pass the Defense appropriations for next year's budget. The House has acted, the Senate must act. Our nation is at war, and our budget priorities and actions need to reflect that reality. Congress should send the Defense bill to my desk by the end of this month. ”

“ We cannot go down the path of soaring budget deficits. We must meet our defense and homeland security needs, and hold the line on other spending. My budget raises defense spending by more than 14 percent. It nearly doubles homeland security funding. In all other areas, it increases spending by two percent. Many families are living with raises like that, and so should the government. ”

“ The defense industrial base will continue to compress and it is not clear that the necessary level of efficiencies or increases in effectiveness in using this base can be identified and implemented, suggesting further pressures on a defense budget that is only likely to be cut. ”

“ But with up-down, up-down funding, it does look as though some want to turn the Congress' defense budget into a kind of crazy roller coaster. Yet this up-down funding is inefficient and costly, taking money out of the taxpayers pockets. And there could be no thrill in going downhill very fast when what would be going down would be our ability to defend itself. ”

“ Nevertheless, a new Administration must of necessity build on the spending and revenue estimates already submitted. Within that framework, barring the development of urgent national defense needs or a worsening of the economy, it is my current intention to advocate a program of expenditures which, including revenues from a stimulation of the economy, will not of and by themselves unbalance the earlier Budget.
However, we will do what must be done. For our national household is cluttered with unfinished and neglected tasks. Our cities are being engulfed in squalor. ”