Your Tax Dollars Hard at War

The total U.S. budget for fiscal 2011 will be around $3 trillion, not counting funds collected for Social Security. The military's share is around $1.6 trillion, meaning about 53 percent of Americans' tax dollars are being spent on the military. The military's 2011 budget is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation-adjusted dollars, exceeding the spending for World War II, when the country was on an all-out military footing. U.S. military spending accounts for 47 percent -- or almost half -- of the entire world's spending on war and weaponry. The U.S. military budget is also rising at about 9 percent annually, faster than any other budget sector. The increase makes the country's annual inflation in health care cost -- about 3.7 percent for medical services -- look tiny by comparison. By contrast, Iran, portrayed as America's arch enemy, has a total military budget of $4.8 billion, and America's other "major enemy," North Korea, spends about $5 billion on its military. To compare the size of those budgets to the total U.S. military budget, $4.8 billion is roughly the equivalent of what the Pentagon plans to spend over the next year on childcare and youth programs, morale and recreation programs, and commissaries on it bases alone. The massive military spending occurs during one of the most difficult budget climates ever for schools, Medicare, Medicaid, the postal system, transportation systems, unemployment and retirement programs, and other domestic programs.