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Wednesday, February 4th, 2015

America’s Real National Security Budget — A Trillion Dollars a Year

Author:     DAVID AXE
Source:     War is Boring
Publication Date:    
Link: America’s Real National Security Budget — A Trillion Dollars a Year
Stephan:   We have grossly inadequate funding for schools, infrastructure, elder care, child-care, and a host of other programs and projects that create a more compassionate and life-affirming society. But, boy, the dollars fall like a blizzard on the military industrial security industries. Here is the real truth of where you tax dollars are going. The sums are so large I think they are essentially incomprehensible to ordinary people.
Fighter aircraft production line. Credit: aviationintel.com

Fighter aircraft production line.
Credit: aviationintel.com

On Feb. 2, the White House rolled out its military and intelligence budget proposal for 2016—and it’s a doozy. The administration wants $534 billion for the Pentagon’s normal “base” budget plus another $51 billion for combat operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

That’s $585 billion combined, $25 billion more than Congress approved last year. Washington conceals spending on the country’s 16 spy agencies—as much as $80 billion—largely inside the main Pentagon budget.

But the official numbers don’t reflect the true cost of America’s wars and national defense. In reality, the United States spends closer to trillion dollars a year on its current and former soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, intel agents and their equipment—and also the paramilitary “homeland security” personnel whose equivalents in many other countries are uniformed troops.

Mandy Smithberger, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information—part of the Project on Government Oversight in […]

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