Straight form the Office of the US Budget:

Table S–4. Discretionary Funding By Appropriations Subcommittee
(Net budget authority in billions of dollars)
Appropriations Subcommittee
                                                                           2006 2007 Change2006–2007
Agriculture and Rural Development.......................... 18.5     17.2     1.3
Defense..............................................................399.2   423.2    24.0
Energy and Water Development.............................. 30.1     29.4      0.7
Foreign Operations................................................ 20.7     23.7     3.0
Homeland Security................................................ 30.5     30.9      0.4
Interior and Environment....................................... 25.9     25.2     0.8
Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education . 141.8    137.8     4.0
Legislative Branch.................................................. 3.8     4.2        0.5
Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs.............. 45.2     52.5     7.3
Science, State, Justice, and Commerce................... 58.7     59.7     1.0
Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, Judiciary, and
District of Columbia.............................................. 68.8     67.1     1.8
Allowances.................................................................. — 0.4 0.4
Total, excluding supplemental and emergency funding843.3 870.7     27.3
Notes: Supplementals and emergencies, both enacted and anticipated, are excluded.
The House and Senate adopted different spending committee structures in the 2006 appropriations season.
This table is consistent with the structures in which the 2006 appropriations bills were enacted.

 

Apologies for the misalignment of collumns.

 

My math says that for 2007 the Defense budget represents 48.6% of the budget + the special allocation in addition of around $50B for the Illegal War.

For 2006 the percentage comes in at 47.3%.

Anger doesn't even begin to describe my feelings about this obscene set of numbers.  This is a huge amount of money - to defend our country against ...what????  Who???

One might ask how much are 3000 lives worth? 

Another person might ask how many lives would be saved from starvation, thirst, disease, and exposure not only in America but throughout the world with this money?  Thousands?  MILLIONS? How many friends would be earned within our country and across the world by saving their families?  How many crops would be saved?  How much fresh water could be preserved? How many hospitals could be built?  How much AIDS medicines could be distributed?  How far could this advance medical research into life threatening illnesses?  How many homes for the homeless could be built?  How much food could be distributed?  How many desperately needed environmental programs could be financed?  How much research into alternative forms of energy could be funded?   How many schools could be built? How many poor students could get quality education? How many forests could be saved?  How could it help the clean up the air from CO2?  How amny orhans and widows and desperately poor be cared for and given a chance to enjoy life?  

How much could we change this world if we spent this much money annually for the next 10 years on the above? Even half this money?  Even a third?

Instead we as a society have built the most devilish, destructive, powerful war machine the world has ever known to protect us from....well....Iraqis?...Afghans?....Iranians?...North Koreans?...who?  Who is so powerful that they could cause the richest, most powerful country in the world to spend massive amounts of money in fear of its life?

Dear God.  What are we doing to the ourselves and the world?  We had such a wonderful opportunity as the richest country ever to exist to change this world.  But we became paranoid and delusional as a country, seeing enemies everywhere - enemies who wanted our...MONEY...and who hated and lusted after our FREEDOMS.  And in the process, our country lost its humanity, its dignity, its honor and its freedom.

 And the saddest thing is, that as a nation, we are not even conscious of it.  We still believe we are the good guys, the saviors of the world, the defender of freedom and the shining light on a hill in the midst of darkness and human depravity. 

Ttribe, many of the expenses for war are "off budget" and are picked up by emergency spending bills, bridge funds, supplemental spending, to name a few. See this WSJ article  for more information:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114178357697392103-oUlYO3eEmnMcLmg4T6tkp_N6vfw_20060407.html?mod=tff_article 

Layla says "Polls are basically media tools to influence those who know little or even less than that, nothing."

 That is often enough true but the description is inaccurate in these two cases.  The 2004 poll was for elite use and sought to give the policymaking/political class some reality based handle on U.S. public opinion regarding foreign policy.  The 2005 poll was commissioned for internal use by the British Ministry of Defence.

The better and more relevant polls --- and these two and others are in fact relevant to the left ----  suggest only opportunities and possiblities for activists. I have no doubt that they express mainly passive opinions.  Still it useful for people holding progressive opinions to know thet are not as much of a minority as they think...they often have something of a majority position. There is at least something to work with in this IMO.   

 

http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/

 

Polls are basically media tools to influence those who know little or even less than that, nothing.

 If I remember correctly, Jay Leno in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was GUN HO!...I remember a distinct USO mentality at work.  Now Americans complain.  Now they complain.  Too late.  Its already a go. 

 I used to believe that this wasn't a war of Religious Persecution but it has become absolutely apparent to me (as a Shia muslim) that it is and that there are foreign operators inside of Iraq (they were there a FULL year before the US invasion) who are 'helping out' a bit with Sectarian Agendas.  They may be of any number of affiliations including Mossad, US foreign intelligence, Syrian and Gulf "Ossama-ites". 

If I am a generally broad minded, well read American Shia Muslim...then imagine what the real Shia are thinking.  The ones who have not only been suffering oppression for the last three decades under UN/US led sanctions, but suffering as a cultural identity for the past 1400 years under Sunni Oppression.  Noting of course, the US primarily backed Sunni interests throughout all ME conflicts (as well as building the incredibly INTOLERANT Israeli war machine).  Noting as well that the US only intervened in Iraq so that it would not end up being the next Iran. 

 Not news to anyone here I'm sure.  But imagine if my sentiments (I was pro Bush) have changed.  Imagine what they are thinking.

Should the US get out?  Well.......I think they are already moving in that direction.  Wasn't that their plan all along?  Come on folks.  We've been duped once again.

 What next, the plague?

I keep on seeing that the polls show the majority of Americans want to pull our troops out of Iraq, stop the tax cuts that the wealthy enjoy, increase spending on education, start a fair health program, etc.. The trouble is that being stopped on the street, or phoned, to answer poll questions is passive. Someone is doing the asking, the "citizen" is merely giving an answer then going back to his/her day. Maybe if more people wrote their congressmen with their concerns or, heaven forbid, made the effort to vote, the polls would become realities. It's easy to complain, much harder to take action. Throughout our history many people have suffered and sacrificed so that the populace would have a voice. Now we just need to use it.

(in this case Iraqis) opinions >>> Why not have a referendum on it. Let the Iraqi people decide whether the foreign troops should stay or not.

excuse me Paul for being off topic, i was wondering if anyone can shed somelight. 

I recall reading in Chomsky that most Americans believe that the biggest expense in the federal budget is social security, implying that it was not, Chomsky then goes on to say that 40c in every tax dollar goes to the defence budget, accounting for the majority of the budget.

 However

I just be reading in 'Social Policy' (Amanda Barusch p33)  that the 'largest federal program was Social Security' representing 22.1% of the budget of 2004, defence being 17.5%.

As you can see i am conflicted, Chomsky continuely say's 'facts matter' and ask that we check the facts for ourselv's. Can anyone shed some light?