September 01, 2011
The Post reported on a speech that General David Petraeus gave at the ceremony marking his retirement from the military. It noted that he warned against excessive cuts in the military. The piece notes that cuts in the range of $400 billion to $1 trillion over the next decade have been suggested by President Obama and members of Congress.
It would have been helpful to put these numbers in context for readers. The current projections show a baseline where the government will spend just under $8 trillion on the military over the next decade. This is approximately 4 percent of GDP and 17.0 percent of the total budget. (This does not count many military related expenditures like veterans benefits.)
If the larger $1 trillion sum was deducted from projected spending, the country would still be spending roughly 3.5 percent of GDP on the military. By contrast, it was spending just 3.0 percent in 2000. At the time, spending was projected to fall relative to the size of the economy. This means that even with the larger cuts mentioned in the article the country would still be spending far more on the military than was envisioned before the September 11th attacks.
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