If you ever find yourself engaged in a debate over why our national debt — now $15.7 trillion —has risen $5.9 trillion over the past four years and $15.4 trillion over the past fifty years, NPR has released a useful chart (based on figures provided by the White House Office of Management and Budget) that helps to answer the question.

As the chart shows, in 1962 — the middle year of John F. Kennedy’s presidency — we spent 52 percent of our federal budget on national defense and 1 percent on federal health programs.  Last year, under President Obama, we spent 23 percent on national defense and 23 percent on federal health programs.  So, while the share of the federal budget that we’ve spent on defense has dropped by 56 percent since JFK, the share of the federal budget that we’ve spend on health programs has risen by 2,200 percent over that same span.