The New York Times has a useful infographic outlining proposals for how to trim the defense budget. The Pentagon has committed to cutting $450 billion in spending over the next 10 years—only a small slice of the tremendous increase in war and defense spending we have seen in the previous 10 years. The graph below shows U.S. Defense Spending excluding all outlays for the department of homeland security since 2000.

As highlighted by the blue and red portions of the bar graph, the DOD’s budget and spending on wars has more than doubled since 2000. The tool provided by the NYT allows you to make your own plan to reduce the defense budget by choosing some of the possible cuts that have been proposed by various members of Congress.

The results of user generated cuts are being displayed on front of the U.S. page. Currently, the results show $137 billion in cuts—only 30% of the necessary minimum proposed. Here is a link to my spending cuts. I was able to get $1.4 trillion in cuts through the available budgetary choices.

UPDATE: In today’s press release on defense spending, President Obama stated:

Let’s also remember-over the past ten years, since 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace. Over the next ten years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this-it will still grow, because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush Administration. And I firmly believe, and I think the American people understand, that we can keep our military strong-and our nation secure-with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined.

Featured Image: © Chrisharvey | Dreamstime.com