The Senate today voted to keep the timeline in the Iraq bill. Who would have thought it would come down to the wire in Nebraska?Though the congressional debate is getting most of the attention--as it should--we still need to remember the crazy amount of money we're shoveling out the door to support our "defense". I put that in quotations on purpose...because the level of spending is so high and the debate about it so inadequate, and we are so NOT funding the solutions that will keep us safe in the long run.

Last year a Congressional Research Report put the average per troop costs for Iraq are between $355,000 and $360,000 per individual, per year; this dollar amount has been increasing since 2003. The last report came out this month put the cost of the wars so far at around $752 billion. gulp.

But the public is continually mis-educated about defense spending---so it isn't surprising that many people believe a fallacy: the more we spend on defense, the more security we purchase. Continually, we hear how today's defense budget is just over 4% of GDP...far lower than at any point in recent history. NPR repeated this trope yesterday. But journalists almost always fail to mention how gigantic our economy has grown in comparison to the World War II era. Even worse, They don't place this figure in context. The most important fact for taxpaying citizens is that the defense budget now takes up more than half of all the dollars we have available to spend every year. This year, its at 59% for 08 not including war spending. The amount of dollars is getting smaller and smaller for everything else. Here's a fantastic video on the topic.

There's no end to the lameness of the mainstream coverage. Today the New York Times framed this question