The United States is the single biggest military spender in the world. National Priorities – an organization that educates the American public on the federal budget – takes note of this fact, and ties U.S. military spending – which is primarily focused on current and potential conflicts abroad – to its analog here at home: spending on veterans of foreign wars, incarceration, immigration enforcement, and the war on drugs.
In 2019, the militarized budget amounted to 64.5 percent of discretionary spending. U.S. military spending, traditionally defined, was $730 billion in 2019. Studies that seek to define a “national security” budget – which includes the military, and also veterans’ affairs, homeland security, and similar expenses – can easily arrive at estimates approaching or exceeding $1 trillion per year. That amount approaches the size of the entire U.S. discretionary budget.
The National Priorities report defines a different, but related, concept: the militarized budget. In recognition that the U.S. maintains both the world’s highest military spending, and one of its highest incarceration rates, the militarized budget includes the traditional military budget, as well as spending on veterans’ affairs, homeland security, incarceration, law enforcement, immigration enforcement, and the still-ongoing war on drugs.
PEP Perspective
Background
Those who believe in a Peace Economy believe that a substantial amount of any cuts need to come out of the defense budget. Although our organization does not endorse political candidates or parties, some in the political system are addressing the issues we care about. In the summer of 2020, there was a Senate amendment introduced to the National Defense Authorization Act to divert 10 percent of the $740 billion military budget to jobs, health care, and education; a House amendment to accomplish effectively the same thing; and a Senate proposal to strongly curtail the 1033 program, the program that transfers military hardware to law enforcement agencies. The first two proposals came from Bernie Sanders and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, while the third even had bipartisan support.
Links
Center for American Progress http://www.americanprogress.org/. Focuses on a variety of national issues from a progressive perspective. Experts on the military budget include Larry Korb, Rudy deLeon and Caroline Wadhams.
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) http://www.cbo.gov/. An indispensable, non-partisan source of analysis about the spending implications of proposed legislation.
DoDBuzz http://www.dodbuzz.com. An online defense and acquisition journal that covers lots of details surrounding the pentagon and those who sell weapons to it.
Global Issues http://www.globalissues.org/. A detailed site maintained by Anup Shah that covers social, political, economic and environmental issues.
Government Accountability Office (GAO) http://www.gao.gov/. An independent, non-partisan agency that works for Congress, investigating how federal money is spent. About 900 GAO reports are published annually, most of them requested by congressmen.
Project on Government Oversight (POGO) http://www.pogo.org/. Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight first focused on military excesses. It has since expanded into an independent watchdog concerned with reforms throughout the national government. POGO’s investigations into corruption, misconduct, and conflicts of interest are designed to achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government.
Tax Payers for Common Sense http://www.taxpayer.net/. Covers all aspects of the federal budget including national security. Participated with Cato Institute, Center for American Progress and others on the 2010 Sustainable Defense Task Force (SDEF) as chaired by Congressmen Barney Frank and Ron Paul. It concluded that a trillion dollar cut in the Pentagon Budget over 10 years made sense.
Blog Posts
- Cut Pentagon waste and preserve domestic programs February 11, 2013by Jasmin Maurer, PEP Executive Director published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch Congress put up roadblocks and diverted us away from the fiscal cliff, but the rerouted course isn’t safe yet. Sequestration still looms on the horizon unless Congress can reach an alternative (“Lawmakers go separate ways to find deal,” Feb. 5). On the discretionary spending ...
News
- Some Pentagon spending actually harms our national security October 16, 2013by Lt. General Robert Gard (Ret.), The Hill click here for original article A powerful U.S. military is indispensable to our national security; but in many ways, our bloated military budget has become a direct threat to the very security it is designed to create and protect. Meanwhile, the federal government is quickly approaching the debt limit; Treasury ...
- Giant Pentagon Budget Is Unauditable Year After Year October 7, 2013by Ralph Nader, Huffington Post click here for original article The federal government is currently in a state of shutdown thanks to a small faction of extremist Republicans who vehemently bellow that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have a catastrophic economic effect on our country. These members of Congress are so irrational about the ACA that ...
- Study: Pentagon Could Cuts Thousands of Employees September 25, 2013by Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press click here for original article The Defense Department could shed 60,000 more troops than planned and 50,000 civilian employees without hurting U.S. fighting power, four former members of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a new report on military strategy and spending. Nearly $50 billion in budget cuts are recommended in ...
- Bringing Some Sense to the Defense Budget September 20, 2013Bringing Some Sense to the Defense Budget by Ryan Alexander, US News click here for original article Reps. Bill Young, R-Fla., and Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, recently sent Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel aletter about an ongoing review of the organization of the DoD workforce. It is ...
- Military Chiefs Called to Task on Spending Issues September 18, 2013by Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press click here for original article WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday told the nation’s top military brass that their credibility “is on the line” if they don’t give greater details about how budget cuts will affect national security. “Gentlemen, for two years you or your predecessors have come to ...
- House GOP Budget Cooks the Books to Avoid Defense Cuts September 16, 2013by John Glaser, Anti-War Blog click here for original article Remember sequestration? Well, according to the mandatory cuts to the federal budget, funding for fiscal year 2014 can’t exceed $967 billion. Funny then, that House Republicans have proposed a budget of $988 billion for 2014. The reason, according to the Cato Institute’s Tad DeHaven, “appears to be that the GOP wants to manufacture ...
- Defense Cuts Conservatives Should Get Behind July 5, 2013by Pete Sepp, US News click here for original article To many Americans – especially those with right-of-center political leanings – national defense is the single most important priority for the federal government. But is that function compatible with responsible tax and spending policies? According to a recently released study from the free-market-oriented National Taxpayers Union and the R ...
- Pentagon Releases Report on Sequestration Cuts’ Effects June 13, 2013by Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg click here for original article The Pentagon sent Congress a report providing details of $37 billion in sequestration cuts affecting defense contractors from Lockheed (LMT) Martin Corp. to Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. (HII) The report, provided yesterday and required by the current year’s defense appropriations measure, lists the amounts that Congress appropriated for the Pentagon’s 2,500 programs, ...
- Hagel’s Strategic Review: A Reasonable US Defense Posture? May 30, 2013by Carl Conetta, The Huffington Post Conetta is the Director of Project on Defense Alternatives click here for original article On 31 May, the Strategic Choices and Management Review ordered in March by Defense Secretary Hagel will be completed. The review will explore three defense budget reduction options, presumably matching these with proposed new efficiency measures, cuts in military ...
- Did the Pentagon cry wolf over sequestration? May 24, 2013By James Rosen, McClatchy Washington Bureau click here for original article WASHINGTON — A funny thing happened on the way to a predicted disaster: The Pentagon is learning to live with the automatic budget cuts its leaders had warned would threaten national security if they took effect. The change from near-hysteria to sober assessment starts at the top with ...