MILITARY SPENDING:: The Pentagon vs. the Welfare State – RCP
By MB Snow at October 31, 2011 | 12:08 am | Print
WASHINGTON — We shouldn’t gut defense. A central question of our budget debates is how much we allow growing social spending to crowd out the military and, in effect, force the United States into a dangerous, slow-motion disarmament.
People who see military cuts as an easy way to reduce budget deficits forget that this has already occurred. From the late 1980s to 2010, America’s armed forces dropped from 2.1 million men and women to about 1.4 million. The downsizing — the “peace dividend” from the end of the Cold War — was not undone by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1990, the Army had 172 combat battalions, the Navy 546 ships and the Air Force 4,355 fighters; today, those numbers are 100 battalions, 288 ships and 1,990 fighters.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/10/31/the_pentagon_vs_the_welfare_state_111864.html