At 3:55 PM -0400 8/26/04, Doug Henwood wrote:
>Clinton: two minimum wage increases, DOMA, welfare reform, unpaid
>leave, social security contraction
-Clinton: NAFTA, no refund from the end of the Cold War
Adjusted for inflation (1993 dollars), spending on National Defense fell from $291 billion in 1993 to $244 billion by 1996. It began drifting upward in the late 1990s, but it was still less when Clinton took office than when he came in. Defense spending was 20.7% of the federal budget in 1993 and only 16.4% when he left office in 2001. As a percentage of GDP, defense spending dropped from 4.4% down to 3% of the GDP.
Compare these numbers to just a few years later in the 2004 budget, where we are spending $453 billion on the military, it's back up to 19.6% of the federal budget and 4% of the GDP.
Rather stark differences.
Nathan