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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.

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