Thought Leadership

Defense Budget

Military Budget

The military budget is a part of the United States discretionary federal budget that is allocated to the Department of Defense. In brief it is that portion of the budget that goes to all defense-related expenditures.  This military budget pays the salaries, training and health care of uniformed and civilian personnel. In addition it maintains arms, equipment and facilities, funds operations, and develops and buys new equipment. The budget funds all branches of the U.S. military: Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.

Budget for 2010

For the 2010 fiscal year, the President's base budget of the Department of spending on overseas contingency operations brings the sum to $663.84 billion. When the budget was signed into law on October 28, 2009, the final size of the Department of Defense's budget was $680 billion, $16 billion more than President Obama had requested. An additional $37 billion supplemental bill to support the military’s occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan was expected to pass in the spring of 2010; however it has been delayed by the House of Representatives after passing the Senate.

Expenditures on Defense

The recent occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were largely funded through supplementary spending bills outside the Federal Budget. Hence they are not included in the military budget. Starting in the fiscal year 2010 budget however, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are categorized as "Overseas Contingency Operations" and included in the budget.

By the end of 2008, the U.S. had spent approximately $900 billion in direct costs on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Indirect costs such as interest on the additional debt and incremental costs of caring for the more than 33,000 wounded borne by the Veterans Administration are additional.

Other defense-related expenditures

Military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget comprise nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance.

Aside from all the above other defense related expenditures include expenditure by the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA