The Fiscal Limits of the Warfare-Welfare State: Defense and Welfare Spending in the United States Since 1900

Abstract

TT IS widely believed among scholars that defense spending in A-merica is excessively high and has gained an undue influence in setting national priorities which adversely affect our welfare programs. Some writers maintain defense expenditures are excessive because our defense effort has required a reduction in more desirable social welfare programs.' Others argue that in recent years our military system has become "economically non-productive" and causes stagnation and therefore rising welfare costs in the civilian sector.2 Still others believe that excessive and "wasteful" defense expenditures are deliberately planned and necessary for a capitalist system to survive.3 Finally, a substantial number of analysts simply believe that the fear of an external threat upon which defense budgets are based is grossly exaggerated, and, conversely, that welfare needs have been underestimated. Both our pacifistic and Judaeo-Christian t-raditions support this position. Those who argue for these propositions usually do so on the basis of a single and quite broad definition of defense spending and a fairly narrow definition of welfare spending. Moreover, the basis of funding is almost always limited to the federal budget. This method, of course, includes virtually all defense-related expenditures, but excludes much of the thrust of state and local welfare-related programs which have been rising almost as fast as federal outlays. These studies also focus on recent years and do not examine long-term trends in either defense or welfare spending. This essay will attempt to expand the number of working definitions of both defense and welfare spending, and compare the spending patterns derived by those different methods since these data first became available. In addition, a method of measurement common to both welfare and defense spending will be developed for purposes of better comparison. It is hoped that, by using a variety of definitions and methods of measurement and a more extensive longitudinal focus, the reader may gain a much more comprehensive picture of the interrelationship between defense spending and welfare spending in the United States and thereby be better able to determine whether either or both are excessive. Finally, I shall argue that our rapidly rising social welfare expenditure trends are far more unsettling than our shrinking defense commitments.