One picture worth a thousand words is a graph on the U.S. Department of Defense website showing U.S. annual Defense spending as a percentage of GDP, going back to 1953.
Two things jump out.
First, the lowest over the 70-year period was in 1999, at the end of the Clinton administration, when it stood at 2.7%. This is a little more than half the previous low, which stood at 4.5% 20 years earlier, in 1979.
A little over year after this historic low point in defense spending, our nation experienced the worst attack on its homeland in its history on Sept. 11, 2001.
The second thing I notice is that the forecast for 2024 shows that Defense spending as a percentage of GDP will be 2.7%, matching the 1999 low point.
However, the 2.7% in 2024 implies a far lower national priority for Defense spending than the 2.7% in 1999, because in 1999, overall federal spending as a…
