Increased defense/homeland security spending

It most certainly is a major contributor to our high deficits. Military spending accounts for over half of the Federal budget. The government sees it as a cost-effective stimulus program, despite evidence to the contrary. After all, we have spent trillions in war spending over the past decade alone and the economy is still reeling. Spending on military is the single largest expenditure on the budget. Even if "national security" is considered the prominent budget priority (a highly dubious notion, especially with real unemployment hovering around 18% nationally), the reality is that our military spending could be cut in half, and we would still have the largest and most modern military force on Earth, by far, enough to defend this country from any type of enemy. Military spending is inherently wasteful, as much of the production that comes from it is designed to be destroyed on impact, rendering any future benefits that can be generated with the same money effectively obsolete. ... Read more

Spending increased, but the increase alone wasn't enough to do much more than turn a the balance into a small deficit, not the ridiculous ones we have