At Salon, former House staffer David Sirota has an article about spending priorities. It begins:
The last time America found itself in a budget debate pitting domestic priorities against war expenditures, Richard Nixon was in the White House and David Obey was the youngest member of Congress — an antiwar liberal whose insurgent campaign unexpectedly vaulted him into the House seat vacated by the hawkish president’s new defense secretary. In those dark days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Obey was still learning his way around Washington, it was the guns of Vietnam and the Cold War versus the butter of the Great Society and the War on Poverty — and despite Obey’s protests, guns won the day.
Nonsense. Check the figures from the Office of Management and Budget on the percentage of budget going to defense and human resources
...........Defense Human Resources
1969 ...44.9.......36.2
1970... 41.8.......38.5
1971... 37.5.......43.7
1972... 34.3.......46.5
1973... 31.2.......48.6
1974 ...29.5.......50.4
1975... 26.0.......52.1
So by 1975, we were spending twice as much on human resources as on defense.
