Sidra Shabbir
Military spending issue recently makes a high rank over there in US and estimated out in different figures. In year 2012, the US government spent about$841 billion on security the figure that includes defense, intelligence, war appropriations and foreign aid.At the same time the government collected about$ 1.1 trillion in the individual income taxes. “About 80cents of every dollar collected in traditional federal income taxes went for security”. That’s an astonishing statistics and captures the most underappreciated aspect of today’s fiscal challenges.Such spending is significantly higher that all non-defense discretionary domestic spending. Worse yet, almost nobody in Washington seems interested in seriously curtailing defense spending that is greater in real terms that what the US spent in the cold war. While the Simpson Bowles commission advocated over a trillion dollars in defense cuts, President Obama’s budget would only reduce spending modestly, and even that’s hard sell on Capitol Hill. But military spending is a big ticket item, and it’s perfectly legitimate to question military spending. Remember, robust defense serve a purpose and allow the united states to preempt threats before they arrive at our shores, no other country is capable of protecting its interest around the world like united states, and sustaining a military force that can project power worldwide comes at a cost.US, military spending today, as it is dictated by the bipartisan budget control Act (BCA) is comprised of the Pentagon’s base budget excluding the cost of recent wars. This spending is approaching historic highs. In inflation adjusted dollars, US taxpayers will spend more on military in each of next 5years ($510 billion) To be sure, the US military is indeed smaller today than it was six years ago, or during the cold war. Consider it just in term of the numbers of man and women serving on active duty. In 1952 at the height of Korean War, active duty end strength peaked at 3.6 million. During the Vietnam War, the number of active duty personnel reached 3.5million. The high point is the post-cold war era came in 2010.when end strength peaked at 1.5million, less than half the number in uniform at the time of those earlier wars. And yet total Pentagon spending was higher in 2010 than of 1952 or 1968_35% higher than 1952 and 32% higher in 1968. People of US probably 63% in the increasing favor of military spending issue while the 23% were in the decreasing favor of this issue.
