The thought process that $750,000 dollars is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things is exactly the type of thinking that has gotten our government into $16 trillion + debt.
Your background in specwar does have a legitmate arguement along with some other designators such as Nuke and CEC maybe. However, many of the options don't require specific backgrounds. ie. Pilot, NFO, Intel, SWO, Nurse Corp etc. These options don't require specific enlisted backgrounds. I would say that we are both correct based on last years numbers. All of the options with no specific enlisted sources were down in numbers while Nuke had very high selection rates. I think this info backs your thoughts up about cost benefit analysis for certain options aw well as mine in a general sense.