This Chart Illustrates the Difference Between the Romney & Obama Plan for Defense Spending

The following chart from Bloomberg Insider also illustrates the history of U.S. defense spending since President Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Click to enlarge

“Candidate Romney has set a goal of a base Pentagon budget that’s equal to 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product,” writes Rob Levinson and Cameron Leuthy for Bloomberg. “That’s about where defense spending will be in the coming year, assuming a decline in spending for the war in Afghanistan.”

“Depending on how the economy behaves during the next four to eight years, a President Romney’s 4 percent solution may prove welcome to the party’s traditional defense hawks yet face real pushback from deficit hawks,” they add.

Why is Romney so interested in defense spending? Because, if elected and his policies enacted, candidate Romney argues that an increased investment in this area will grow GDP by a full four percent each year. But to achieve this, his plan calls for far more defense spending than President Obama's plan.

“[I]f the economy grows as he predicts and he gradually ramps up defense spending to his goal of 4 percent of GDP by the end of his first term, the nation would spend about $400 billion more on defense in Romney’s first term than Obama currently plans in his second,” the Bloomberg report adds.

Here’s the full Bloomberg Insider's Convention 2012 Issue:

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(H/T: Zero Hedge). Front page photo courtesy the AP.