Military costs

Does it seem that maintaining a defensive army seems to be taking up more monthly costs than before?

I believe so
Yet defensive army costs were to be dropping and was supposed to be less expensive

That's what I also thought..

Also, when I look around at other countries (I'm on all 5 worlds). Alot of countries are in the red -and not just by small amounts -I'm talking big negative numbers like for example -652,000,000. Most of my countries are in the red and in fact I just had some inexplicable large jump in the expense side.
I know you Khome have a large empire (the Malizian) on KB. Have you noticed anything of late?

Yup. Big jump in costs overall. Not so "profitable" as one may claim. I noticed a lot of it is the "phantom" cost. The cost of government that lacks any measurable purpose. It's taken out of monthly costs, yet unrepresented. Defense costs are identified, but are much more expensive. Another thing that happened was the new game policy of forcing larger country or enterprise funds into corps with low cash reserves. The result is an overreacting transfer of enterprise funds, running it into a huge debt.
Another thing too is the forcing of unwanted corps, even though we may select the auto function off. This is still happening in countries with employment indexes above 70 or 80. It's ridiculous.