Liberals like to place the blame for out-of-control budgets squarely on defense spending. If only it hadn’t been for those two crazy wars and all of the money we spend on high-tech weaponry we’d be fine, right?

Wrong. The Heritage Foundation has helpfully created a series of charts to provide a visual reference for the 2010 federal budget. This one is particularly helpful.

As you’ll see, spending for national defense accounts for just 4.9% of gross domestic product (GDP). Meanwhile, entitlement spending accounts for a whopping 9.9% of GDP. So we’re spending more than twice the percentage of GDP on entitlement programs as we are for the constitutionally-mandated national defense.

In fact, national defense spending as a percentage of GDP has generally declined over time, while entitlement spending has been consistently on the rise. Despite the Reagan military build-up in the 80s, since 1976 we’ve consistently spent more as a percentage of GDP on entitlement programs than our military.