[MORTARDUDE]

Veterans Affairs budgets from 1962 - 2008
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budge...04/pdf/hist.pdf

I was curious about the VA budget over time and found the following. You will note that the only times that funding has went down from year to year were : 1976 - 77, 1989 - 90, 1995 - 96, 2000 - 01. In each case, there was a large increase shortly thereafter to offset it. Also note that from 1992 - 2002, the budget went from 34 billion to 51 billion, or a 50% increase in constant dollars, not counting inflation. >>> I am posting this for info only. You can draw your own conclusions. <<< ( The numbers to the right are a percentage of the total budget for that year. ) One thing to consider about this, would be the total number of veterans who would be available to receive benefits. The current number of living veterans is something like 25,000,000, which is less than 10% of the population. I am sure if you started in 1962 and looked at this, the numbers are significantly higher, and account for the higher percentage of the budget for the VA.

1962 -- 5,608
1963 -- 5,501 4.9
1964 -- 5,662
1965 -- 5,710
1966 -- 5,962
1967 -- 6,691
1968 -- 7,018
1969 -- 7,670
1970 -- 8,652
1971 -- 9,758
1972 -- 10,713
1973 -- 11,970 4.9
1974 -- 13,339
1975 -- 16,577
1976 -- 18,416
1977 -- 18,020
1978 -- 18,965
1979 -- 19,891
1980 -- 21,137
1981 -- 22,907
1982 -- 23,941
1983 -- 24,827 3.1
1984 -- 25,593
1985 -- 26,333
1986 -- 26,536
1987 -- 26,952
1988 -- 29,271
1989 -- 30,041
1990 -- 28,998
1991 -- 31,214
1992 -- 33,897
1993 -- 35,487 2.5
1994 -- 37,401
1995 -- 37,771
1996 -- 36,920
1997 -- 39,280
1998 -- 41,773
1999 -- 43,168
2000 -- 47,087 2.6
2001 -- 45,050
2002 -- 50,884
2003 est. -- 56,946
2004 est. -- 61,889
2005 est. -- 66,877
2006 est. -- 66,463
2007 est. -- 65,782
2008 est. -- 70,790


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