One the common attacks made on the two Clinton terms is that military
funding was decimated. Let's take a look and see exactly how military
funding was affected during his presidency:
This first chart indicates national defense spending, as indicated by
the White House
here. These numbers are adjusted for inflation, and are in
Year 2000 dollars. Of course, there is the issue of how much the entire
budget went up, and if Clinton's military/defense spending decreased as
a percentage of the total budget, and relative to GDP, which we will
look at next:
Lastly, here is national defense spending by administration:
Overall, while defense spending may have trailed off slightly depending
on which indicator we look at, it remained relatively constant
during the Clinton administrations. Bear in mind, this is also
considering that Clinton's first administration took place immediately
after the end of the Gulf War and the Cold War. It seems that according
to the data, the idea that Clinton decimated/significantly cut
military/defense spending is a major overstatement.
