What percentage of the federal budget is spent on the military?

Answer 1

As shown below, the % the US budget spent on the US Military can depends on whether one includes the "hidden expenses" such as the Department of Energy, NSA, CIA, war debt, Veteran's benefits (which deceptively are not included in the official military budget), and other expenses. It also depends on whether one includes Social Security as part of the overall budget. Some say it is not a correct element of the overall Federal budget since individuals pay in to as a fund. (If one cannot afford to pay into the social security "Trust Fund", one does not receive the benefit upon retirement, unlike the retirement benefits in most other developed nations who pay retirement pensions as a right to all citizens, whether one pays into a "fund" or not.)

Another way to get useful related information is to compare how much $ has been spent on the US military/war with the amount of US revenue that has been received. Although it only provides a snap-shot of spending vs revenue year-to-date, it be very accurate when viewed at the end of the fiscal year.

Currently, as of Aug 2012, about 28.3% of US revenue has been spent on the US military/war this year according to official reports. However when not including the "hidden" expenses and mandatory spending such as the separate "tax" of social security, it is much larger .

Most anti-war groups such as the War Resister's League and the liberal journal, the Nation Magazine point to hidden spending not included in official statistics that include veteran's benefits, the war portion of the Department of Energy (of which approximately 90% of it funds have gone to nuclear weapons), and the undisclosed funds for departments including the CIA, NSA and the increasing myriad of other similar "national security" departments. They say that the government's view of the budget is a distortion of how our income tax dollars are spent because it includes Trust Funds (e.g., Social Security), and the expenses of past military spending are not distinguished from nonmilitary spending. The 2009 U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined.

Answer 2

20% is directly attributed to the Department of Defense (DOD), but there are ancillary things to consider as well:

1) If congress spends 20% of its time debating military issues, should 20% of the expense of running congress be considered military spending?

2) The Coast Guard, often considered a part of the military, falls under the Department of Transportation, not DOD.

3) The National Guard often draws from funding that is unrelated to the DOD expenditure figures.

So the reality is probably more like 25%, not 20%.

Answer 3

No one can say. Would you count every cent paid for defense as contributing to the deficit, or just that amount above a certain sum? The deficit is larger than the defense budget each year. Defense spending is roughly 20% of Federal spending, but with the current historically extremely low tax rates, with which we have made the wealthy extremely happy and twice as wealthy as they were thirty years ago, the government is allowed to collect only enough to cover about 64% of spending each year. Many people believe that we spend far too much on defense. The US has 5% of the people on the planet, and spends 50% of the money spent on defense in the entire world. We spend way more than the next 27 nations combined, 25 of which are our allies. We have more than 790 military bases outside the US - 24 in Japan alone. We have paid for Japan's national defense since the end of WWII, nearly 70 years, and they charge us rent for the bases from which we defend them. They of course have returned the favor by ravaging our economy with cars and electronics produced by their government-subsidized corporations, while our government taxes our corporations trying to compete. And the Japanese allow very few American companies to do business in Japan. The US has been on a permanent wartime economy since the end of the Korean War, more than sixty years ago. We never used to do this, and the nation was in those long ago days incredibly prosperous and the envy of the world. Its been since Reagan came to office that we have really ran large deficits every year (after enacting tax cuts disproportionately favoring the rich) and thus racked up a national debt that is now about 65 times what it was when Reagan got to town. Defense spending has also soared over those same years - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan probably cost us $3-4 trillion, or one fourth, roughly, of the total national debt. Even with WWII, it took until the Kennedy administration for the US to have its first $100 billion annual budget, and we now spend close to $700 billion every year on defense. So, even if you argue about the exact amount, and disagree on just how much defense spending is necessary, I think a strong case can be made that our spending has been way out of line for several generations, and that this has contributed to the deficit each year and to the accumulated nation debt. Defense spending is, everyone hopes, the least productive way for the government to spend money. You pray that the things you buy are never used. So beyond paying military personnel and civilian employees, the workers who make munitions, and nice fat dividend checks for the shareholders of those corporations, there is no ripple effect in further economic activity from defense spending.