Budget by year Edit

Defense Spending as a Percent of GDP 1792-2017 Historical defense spending The following is historical spending on defense from 1996-2015, spending for 2014-15 is estimated.[2] The Defense Budget is shown in billions of dollars and total budget in trillions of dollars. The percentage of the total U.S. federal budget spent on defense is indicated in the third row, and change in defense spending from the previous year in the final row. Decades 1990s 2000s 2010s Years 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 Defense Budget (Billions) 266 270 271 292 304 335 362 456 491 506 556 625 696 698 721 717 681 610 614 637 Total Budget (Trillions) 1.58 1.64 1.69 1.78 1.82 1.96 2.09 2.27 2.41 2.58 2.78 2.86 3.32 4.08 3.48 3.51 3.58 3.48 3.64 3.97 Defense Budget % 16.8 16.5 16.0 16.4 16.7 17.1 17.3 20.1 20.4 19.6 20.0 21.9 20.9 17.1 20.7 20.4 19.1 17.5 16.8 16.0 Defense Spending % Change -0.1 +1.6 +0.2 +7.8 +4.0 +10.1 +8.2 +26.0 +7.6 +3.1 +10.0 +12.5 +11.3 +0.2 +3.4 -0.6 -5.0 -10.5 +0.6 +3.8



Budget for FY2019 Edit

Previous Budgets Edit

Support service contractors Edit

Main article: Defense contractor See also: List of United States defense contractors The role of support service contractors has increased since 2001 and in 2007 payments for contractor services exceeded investments in equipment for the armed forces for the first time.[39] In the 2010 budget, the support service contractors will be reduced from the current 39 percent of the workforce down to the pre-2001 level of 26 percent.[40] In a Pentagon review of January 2011, service contractors were found to be "increasingly unaffordable."[41]

Military budget and total US federal spending Edit

Fiscal Year 2012 U.S. Federal Spending – Cash or Budget Basis. The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, military spending was approximately 28–38% of budgeted expenditures and 42–57% of estimated tax revenues.[citation needed] According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000–2009.[42] Because of constitutional limitations, military funding is appropriated in a discretionary spending account. (Such accounts permit government planners to have more flexibility to change spending each year, as opposed to mandatory spending accounts that mandate spending on programs in accordance with the law, outside of the budgetary process.) In recent years, discretionary spending as a whole has amounted to about one-third of total federal outlays.[43] Department of Defense spending's share of discretionary spending was 50.5% in 2003, and has risen to between 53% and 54% in recent years.[44] For FY 2010, Department of Defense spending amounts to 4.7% of GDP.[45] Because the U.S. GDP has grown over time, the military budget can rise in absolute terms while shrinking as a percentage of the GDP. For example, the Department of Defense budget was slated to be $664 billion in 2010 (including the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan previously funded through supplementary budget legislation[46][47]), higher than at any other point in American history, but still 1.1–1.4% lower as a percentage of GDP than the amount spent on military during the peak of Cold-War military spending in the late 1980s.[45] Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called four percent an "absolute floor".[48] This calculation does not take into account some other military-related non-DOD spending, such as Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and interest paid on debt incurred in past wars, which has increased even as a percentage of the national GDP. In 2015, Pentagon and related spending totaled $598 billion. In addition, the United States will spend at least $179 billion over the fiscal years of 2010-2018 on its nuclear arsenal, averaging $20 billion per year. Despite President Barack Obama's attempts in the media to reduce the scope of the current nuclear arms race, the U.S. intends to spend an additional $1 trillion over the next 30 years modernizing its nuclear arsenal. In September 2017 the United States Senate followed President Donald Trump's plan to expand military spending, which will boost spending to $700 billion, about 91.4% of which will be spent on maintaining the armed forces and primary Pentagon costs.[49] Military spending is increasing regularly and more money is being spent every year on employee pay, operation and maintenance, and benefits including as health benefits. Methods to counteract rapidly increasing spending include shutting down bases, but that has been banned since an Obama administration Budget Act included a section that stopped just that.[50]

Federal waste Edit

As of September 2014, the Department of Defense was estimated to have "$857 million in excess parts and supplies". This figure has risen over the past years, and of the Pentagon waste that has been calculated, two figures are especially worth mentioning: the expenditure of "$150 million on private villas for a handful of Pentagon employees in Afghanistan and the procurement of the JLENS air-defense balloon" which, throughout the program's development over the past two decades, is estimated to have cost $2.7 billion.[51] One problem with military spending is waste that comes from poor cost estimation. The armed forces are seemingly unable to properly estimate costs, which ends up wasting billions of dollars annually. What is more, there are instances such as in the research and development department where costs are underestimated, which leads to a waste of a different kind: time. Without the appropriate resources, researchers cannot do their job adequately. What this can lead to is employees not working as efficiently as possible.[52]

Comparison with other countries Edit

The U.S. military budget is higher than the nine other biggest military budgets in the world combined. [53] Map of military expenditures as a percentage of GDP by country, 2015. The United States spends more on their defense budget than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan combined.[54] The 2009 U.S. military budget accounts for approximately 40% of global arms spending. The 2012 budget is 6–7 times larger than the $106 billion military budget of China. The United States and its close allies are responsible for two-thirds to three-quarters of the world's military spending (of which, in turn, the U.S. is responsible for the majority).[55][56][57] The US also maintains the largest number of military bases on foreign soil across the world.[58] While there are no freestanding foreign bases permanently located in the United States, there are now around 800 U.S. bases in foreign countries. Military spending makes up nearly 16% percent of entire federal spending and approximately half of discretionary spending. In a general sense discretionary spending (defense and non-defense spending) makes up one-third of the annual federal budget.[59] In 2015, out of its budget of 1.11 trillion, the United States spent $598 billion on military. U.S. defense spending is equivalent to the next seven largest military budgets—India, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China—combined. In 2017, the U.S. military budget is 773.5 billion and is estimated to increase in the upcoming years. In 2005, the United States spent 4.06% of its GDP on its military (considering only basic Department of Defense budget spending), more than France's 2.6% and less than Saudi Arabia's 10%.[60]information 2006 This is historically low for the United States since it peaked in 1944 at 37.8% of GDP (it reached the lowest point of 3.0% in 1999–2001). Even during the peak of the Vietnam War the percentage reached a high of 9.4% in 1968.[61] The US Military's budget has plateaued in 2009, but is still considerably larger than any other military power. As compared with other countries, the United States spends billions more than its closest competitor, China, and more than the next 5 countries, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and France put together. Military spending is important to the Trump administration and it is unlikely that he has any reason to curb it. In addition, military spending is popular with 2017 House Speaker Paul Ryan, showing that U.S. military spending will continue to stay high as compared with other countries.[62]

GAO audits Edit

Reform Edit

In a statement of 6 January 2011 Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates stated: "This department simply cannot risk continuing down the same path – where our investment priorities, bureaucratic habits and lax attitude towards costs are increasingly divorced from the real threats of today, the growing perils of tomorrow and the nation's grim financial outlook." Gates has proposed a budget that, if approved by Congress, would reduce the costs of many DOD programs and policies, including reports, the IT infrastructure, fuel, weapon programs, DOD bureaucracies, and personnel.[99] The 2015 expenditure for Army research, development and acquisition changed from $32 billion projected in 2012 for FY15, to $21 billion for FY15 expected in 2014.[100] In 2018, it was announced that the Department of Defense was indeed the subject of a comprehensive budgetary audit. This review was conducted by private, third-party accounting consultants. The audit ended and was deemed incomplete due to deficient accounting practices in the department.