{"id":2970,"date":"2014-03-24T12:17:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T18:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=2970"},"modified":"2014-03-24T12:17:18","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T18:17:18","slug":"u-s-spends-1-trillion-a-year-on-defense-and-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/u-s-spends-1-trillion-a-year-on-defense-and-security\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Spends $1 Trillion a Year on Defense and Security"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov.com
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

Since President Barack Obama unveiled his 2015 budget proposal, defenders of military spending have lamented the fiscal \u201cdownsizing\u201d of the Pentagon. These hawks, both in Congress and from the defense industry, argue that the nation can\u2019t afford to trim anything from the military.<\/p>\n

As it is, Obama barely took anything off the\u00a0Defense Department<\/a>\u2019s base budget. He\u2019s proposed $495.6 billion in discretionary spending for next year\u2014a mere $400 million, or eight one-hundredths of one percent, less than in 2014\u2019s $496 billion budget.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the matter of how much\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0is going towards national defense, according to theProject on Government Oversight\u00a0<\/a>(POGO).<\/p>\n

The pro-defense lobby focuses on the Pentagon\u2019s discretionary budget, while conveniently ignoring the other $500 billion in tax dollars that help maintain the nation\u2019s security each year.<\/p>\n

For starters, there\u2019s the money allocated for \u201cOverseas Contingency Operations\u201d\u2014a fancy term for funding the war in\u00a0Afghanistan<\/a>. This budget item (separate from the Pentagon\u2019s discretionary spending) eats up around $80 billion annually.<\/p>\n

Another $20 billion goes to the\u00a0Department of Energy<\/a>\u00a0for maintaining the nation\u2019s arsenal of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Department of Homeland Security<\/a>, whose sole reason for existence is protecting America, gets about $52 billion.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Department of Veterans Affairs<\/a>, which takes care of those who defended their nation in\u00a0Iraq<\/a>, Afghanistan and previous wars, receives $161 billion.<\/p>\n

Throw in money for \u201cdefense-related activities,\u201d \u201cmilitary retirement costs,\u201d \u201cinternational affairs\u201d expenditures and interest owed on defense-related debt, which combine to total nearly $200 billion, and the grand total that the U.S. spends to defend itself comes to about $1 trillion annually, POGO estimates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov.com click here for original article Since President Barack Obama unveiled his 2015 budget proposal, defenders of military spending have lamented the fiscal \u201cdownsizing\u201d of the Pentagon. These hawks, both in Congress and from the defense industry, argue that the nation can\u2019t afford to trim anything from the military. As it is, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/7b8a6f56-33d4-4358-b3d0-160.jpg?fit=163%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2972,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions\/2972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}