Bruce Aguilar: Counting inflation, defense spending was cut

Re “Obama got what was coming to him” (Letters, Nov. 11): I read with interest today’s letter to The Bee which listed over 20 various reasons the nation’s electorate overwhelmingly repudiated President Obama in last week’s midterm elections. The Bee chose to respond to only one of these reasons by offering the comptroller’s report on the Department of Defense total dollar budgets for 2008 and 2014, I suppose in an attempt to show that the military budget was not reduced. Though the $527.5 billion figure for this year appears larger than the $479 billion for 2008, The Bee did not offer a comparison based on the cumulative inflation rate of 10.6 percent. The adjusted figure for $479 billion in 2008 would be $529.56 billion in 2014. So, nice try, Bee editors, but the military budget actually was reduced!

This story was originally published November 12, 2014 at 12:01 PM with the headline "Bruce Aguilar: Counting inflation, defense spending was cut."