[OC] US defense outlays since WWI, in constant FY27 dollars. the proposed FY27 budget sits in-between 1943 spend (1.3T) and 1944 spend (1.5T) Actual, and inflation-adjusted equivalents.

Data Sources

– DoD-Military outlays, FY1947 to FY2024. OMB Historical Tables, Budget of the United States

Government, FY2025, Table 3.2 (Outlays by Function and Subfunction, Function 051).

– War and Navy Department outlays, FY1917 to FY1946. US Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics

of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Series Y458 to Y460. The Department of Defense didn’t

exist until the 1947 National Security Act unified the services, so pre-1947 the closest equivalent

is War plus Navy combined. That’s the join marked by the dashed vertical line at 1947.

– FY25 and FY26. Enacted appropriations plus OMB’s FY2027 budget submission.

– FY27 request. White House FY27 Topline Fact Sheet, April 2026

(https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/fiscal-year-2027-topline-fact-sheet.pdf),

with the discretionary-vs-reconciliation breakdown from CSIS: Unpacking the $1.5 Trillion FY 2027

Defense Budget Topline

(https://www.csis.org/analysis/unpacking-15-trillion-fy-2027-defense-budget-topline). The $1.5T

headline is in two parts: about $1.15T discretionary that has to pass through the regular

appropriations process (60 votes in the Senate), plus about $350B routed through a separate

reconciliation bill (51 votes). If the reconciliation portion fails the FY27 figure drops to roughly

$1.15T.

– Inflation deflator. BLS Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, all items, annual average,

not seasonally adjusted. Series CUUR0000SA0 (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCNS), accessed

via FRED. Base 1982-84 = 100. CPI-U runs continuously back to 1913, so the rebase across the whole

century is clean.

Chart.js v4 (https://www.chartjs.org/).

Trump is trying to combine WW2 defense outlays with Vietnam era inflation.

Do you like these data? I mean do you think they mean what, at first glance, they seem to mean?

I always roll my eyes when I see inflation adjusted dollars across a large timespan.