I’m kind of sick of hearing this from various sources, so I went to do some research into government-supplied budgetary data. I threw it into some Excel and ran some charts. Have a look for yourself. I plan on adding some more research there to investigate the various claims I hear from time to time.

One thing I did learn from this process is that budgeting and policy is pretty complex stuff. You might think that our leaders might have to back up their claims with better data than a simple dollar figure spent on National Defense. You might also think that a single number wouldn’t fully disclose changing natures of defense and military structure.

It happens to be that you don’t even need a single number to make a good sound bite. You can get away with a generalization, and as long as you repeat it long enough, those who hear it will believe.