Budget Context: Proposed Defense Spending

The Bush Administration has proposed a staggeringly large defense budget, $623 billion -- and remember, this is direct expenses (there are military-related expenditures in other budget categories). This budget is 60 percent larger than the one Bush proposed in 2001; it woiuld eat up 67 percent of federal discretionary spending. In fact, the proposed Pentagon budget is $10 billion more than Social Security for 2007-2008.

Numbers like this are too large for context; hope these comparisons from The Globalist Quiz help:

• This is more than the combined profits of all Fortune 500 companies.
  In 2005, the combined profits of the Fortune 500 companies totaled $610 billion ($9.1 trillion in revenue). This was 10.2 percent greater than 2004.
• This is double the combined defense expenditures for the next 10 nations.
  In 2005, the next big spenders -- defense-wise -- spent only $321 billion combined. Who are there? The UK, France, Japan, China, Germany, Italy, Saudia Arabia, Russia, India and South Korea.
• This is more than the entire economy of the 16h largest economy, The Netherlands.
  GDP for The Netherlands (population 16.3 million) in 2005 was $595 billion.

Should Congress pass this budget (and remember, some want more spending), the Pentagon would spent money at the rate of $1.2 million a minute.