By Bill Croom—San Antonio, TX
Member, Aerospace Education Council
National Secretary 1997-2000
Recently, while logging on to a popular website, one of those “instant information” boxes caught my eye. It blatantly announced that the DOD share of the President’s proposed Budget exceeds every other slice of the budget pie, and intimated the “unfairness” of that. That’s true only if you consider “discretionary” spending and conveniently ignore “mandatory” programs—think social security. As Paul Harvey would say, “Here’s the rest of the story.”
The facts are that from 1962-2006, the DOD percentage of our Gross Domestic Product shrunk by two-thirds from 9.3% to 3.1%. During this time “Entitlements” rose from 6.1% to 11.9%, while “Other” programs remained almost level. If you look at the data in dollars (Constant FY08 $), DOD rose from $367B in 1962 to $421.1B in 2006 while “Entitlements” went from $242.1B to $1,618B.1 These data do not include supplemental DOD appropriations for several contingencies, but you can see the trend.
Our Air Force Magazine staff does a great job tracking—and publishing—this information. That’s not enough. I believe those of us in the AFA Field, if we are to truly embrace our “EDUCATE, ADVOCATE, SUPPORT” credo, must take this message to the media in our local areas, hold them publicly accountable for publishing complete data, and insist they confine opinions and innuendos to the Op-Ed pages.
On a more personal note, I ask “Who cares?” if Defense gets a larger portion of annual budgets than other departments. I believe it inarguable that without DOD, you can give all the rest anything they request—our nation will not survive to enjoy it.
1 Air Force Magazine, May 2007, “Historical Federal Budget Data,” pp. 56 & 58
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