Mark Neumann: “There is kind of a myth going on out here in Washington D.C., and I noticed it at our town hall meetings, we just held…”

“There is kind of a myth going on out here in Washington D.C., and I noticed it at our town hall meetings, we just held about 20 of them. The myth has really penetrated to the public that they believe defense spending has gone straight up and very, very few people in this Nation recognize the fact that defense spending has actually dropped, in actual dollars spent, dollars written out of the checkbook from $300 to $266 billion a year from 1990 to 1996. In real dollars, it has gone down even more. In real dollars, that is dollars adjusted for inflation, it is comparable to a drop from $325 to $242 billion over that 6-year span of time. The other thing that is out there kind of as a myth is that with this defense spending increase, and we are cutting all these other areas in Government. Well, the reality is that is not true, either. The reality is these other areas called nondefense discretionary spending have risen dramatically from $165 billion in 1986 all the way up to $268 billion 10 years later. So over a 10-year period of time, it has nearly doubled, in spending in these other areas called nondefense.”