There are many other mistakes. The author also says "Fifty years ago Medicare and Medicaid didn't even exist, and federal spending on other health-related services made up a tiny sliver of the whole"
This alone represents a false 20% reduction to the "Defense" budget, at the expense of increasing the appearance of social services budgets. If one adds up all defense related spending not by Federally published categories but by actual expenditures then the picture changes radically -- and it looks a lot closer to the budgets of yesteryear.
This is only true because 50 years ago veteran's benefits and many other related military benefits were part of the defense budget. In 2011 this amounted to $141 billion dollars. Cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Ot...
This alone represents a false 20% reduction to the "Defense" budget, at the expense of increasing the appearance of social services budgets. If one adds up all defense related spending not by Federally published categories but by actual expenditures then the picture changes radically -- and it looks a lot closer to the budgets of yesteryear.