August 04, 2011
The Washington Post is trying to win yet another Pulitzer for bad reporting. Today’s entry is a page 4 story discussing the impact of potential cuts to the military budget. The Post told readers that the Pentagon could face $600 billion in cuts over the next decade.
That is supposed to sound really really big. But is it? It would have been helpful if the Post had bothered to tell readers the baseline level of spending. The Congressional Budget Office baseline is $7.8 trillion over the decade, putting the proposed cuts at a bit under 8 percent of projected spending.
Another useful benchmark is the pre-2001 level of spending. If spending were the same as a share of GDP as the pre 9-11 level, we would spend approximately $5.4 trillion on the military over the next decade.
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