US defense spending exceeded $900 billion by 2006 when total costs are counted

Evidence

In the past couple of budget cycles, hyper-conservatives have targeted programs for the poor because these programs offer both easy fiscal and political targets and convenient ideological rationalization. At the same time, defense budgets, whether narrowly or broadly interpreted, have spiraled. Thus, the defense budget for FY2006 amounted to 435 billion, up 5 percent from the previous year and almost 25 percent from its 2002 total of 344 billion. The projected 40 billion worth of cuts in the 2006 budget projections focused overwhelmingly on social programs such as student loans, health care, and welfare for the poor. If one factored into the figure for the defense budget the entire range of institutional apparatuses sustaining military presence at home and around the world, including 35 billion for Homeland Security, funds to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the considerable sums for their respective reconstructions, the total would reach a staggering $900 billion, up roughly 30 percent since 2002, as Higgs calculates it. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 401

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to contemporary debates about military spending crowding out social investment, echoing Chalmers Johnson’s ‘blowback’ thesis on empire costs.