Thursday, March 03, 2011
The price of American security is not found in the Department of Defense budget alone. There is considerably more to the cost of keeping the U.S. secure from al-Qaeda and other threats, costs that are both direct and indirect, writes Chris Hellman, a former military analyst who now works for the National Priorities Project.
The real price tag for defending the nation is more than a trillion dollars—$1.2 trillion to be exact. Here’s how Hellman came up with this amount, using figures from the proposed 2012 federal budget for the following departments and programs:
Pentagon (including Iraq and Afghanistan wars and miscellaneous costs): $683.8 billion
Energy Department (nuclear weapons): $19.3 billion
State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (counterterrorism activities):
$8.7 billion
Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Justice (“Homeland security” costs): $53.5 billion
U.S. intelligence budget (CIA, National Security Agency, and others): $53.1 billion
Veterans programs: $129.3 billion
Foreign affairs budget (military aid to other countries, “international peacekeeping” countering weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism, and clearing landmines): $18 billion
U.S. military retirees and former civilian Pentagon employees: $68.5 billion
Interest on borrowing to cover past Defense spending: $185 billion
-Noel Brinkerhoff
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