John Spratt: “Here is a good account. Defense, for reasons we all understand, has gone up substantially from the year 2000 to the year…”

“Here is a good account. Defense, for reasons we all understand, has gone up substantially from the year 2000 to the year 2011. This is a projection. It will increase from about $300 billion to $600 billion over that period of time. When the President talks about the increase in spending as if he is laying the blame on the Congress, and in truth most of it is coming in defense accounts, and all of it has been requested by the President of the United States. We have appropriated. I voted for it. I do not think you send troops in the field and give them a tough mission to do and not back them up. But let us be honest where the spending increases he decries are really coming from. They are coming from defense. This layer right here was what was planned for defense in January 2001. This red layer is what the Bush administration added to it in the way of policy. It is mainly new equipment, personnel and things of that nature. This is the cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and future war costs here; also, the cost of waging the war on terror, but it does not include homeland security. This is cost risk because the Pentagon typically has overruns in its programs. CBO said it is reasonable to assume they will miss their targets by at least this amount. When you put all these layers together, you see a budget increase from $300 billion to $600 billion over a 10-year period of time.…”