Are we really spending a trillion on our military this year?

[ronpaulitician]

Ron Paul in March 2007 (http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2007/cr032007.htm)


This $124 billion appropriation is only part of the nearly $1 trillion in military spending for this year’s budget alone.

How does Paul come to a trillion?

Department of Defense will be about $450 billion.
What is the other half trillion spent on?

[ctb619]

the war appropriations are separate from the DoD budget

[ronpaulitician]

the war appropriations are separate from the DoD budget
That's only about $150 billion (annually), though, right?

[foofighter20x]

CTB is right.

Don't look at just the budget numbers. You have to also take into account the off-budget supplimental appropriations.

Think back to Sept 2003 when he asked for that extra $87 billion for Iraq, and the extra $100-something billion he asked for in like Jan of 2005, I think. That's where the extra number come from.

The Budget should be your starting point, but you have to look at all the off-budget spending too.

[ctb619]

Perhaps RP also includes the cost of financing the war and the military on credit (i.e. interest payments).

[hard@work]

hmmmm... sorry to bring this up then:

http://benfrank.net/patriots/news/national/pentagon_missing_trillions

September 10th 2001.

[ronpaulitician]

CTB is right.

Don't look at just the budget numbers. You have to also take into account the off-budget supplimental appropriations.

Think back to Sept 2003 when he asked for that extra $87 billion for Iraq, and the extra $100-something billion he asked for in like Jan of 2005, I think. That's where the extra number come from.

The Budget should be your starting point, but you have to look at all the off-budget spending too.
This source (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf) seems to provide the financial numbers for (a) the war in Iraq, (b) the war in Afghanistan, and (c) the war on terror, and gives the $150 billion number.

That makes it about $600 billion for 2007.

Is off-budget spending you talk about in addition to the spending cites in this source?

[ronpaulitician]

hmmmm... sorry to bring this up then:

http://benfrank.net/patriots/news/national/pentagon_missing_trillions

September 10th 2001.
This money would've been included in the budgets though, right? They just can't account for what it was spent on.

[ronpaulitician]

Perhaps RP also includes the cost of financing the war and the military on credit (i.e. interest payments).
Good point.

What category would our troops in Germany and South Korea fall under? DoD?

[ctb619]

This source (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf) seems to provide the financial numbers for (a) the war in Iraq, (b) the war in Afghanistan, and (c) the war on terror, and gives the $150 billion number.

That makes it about $600 billion for 2007.

Is off-budget spending you talk about in addition to the spending cites in this source?

Again, I haven't found a source, but my guess is that he includes the cost of borrowing the money to finance the war and the other expenditures. He may even add in the additional long-term costs of health care for our wounded soldiers.

[Ron Paul Fan]

And more importantly, the loss of American men and women. Squabbling over a few billion dollars here and there compares nothing to the loss of our soldiers lives. We have now lost over 5,000 of our men and women over in Afghanistan and Iraq. How many more do you wanna lose? How much longer do you wanna be there? How much do we have to pay to save face? That's all we're doing is saving face. It's time we came home!

[fletcher]

Ron Paul in March 2007 (http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2007/cr032007.htm)

How does Paul come to a trillion?

Department of Defense will be about $450 billion.
What is the other half trillion spent on?

Where did you get the $450 billion from? DoD spending for 2007 is $699 billion.

[hard@work]

This money would've been included in the budgets though, right? They just can't account for what it was spent on.

Yes. I was just referencing that frightening piece of little known information for a "no big surprise" effect.

[ronpaulitician]

Where did you get the $450 billion from? DoD spending for 2007 is $699 billion.
My bad. I incorrectly cited discretionary DoD spending, and forgot to include mandatory DoD spending.

Actually, it looks like the $450 billion number may be correct, except that it does not include the additional funding needed for the war on terror ($100-120 billion). Homeland Security is another $30-40 billion or so.

Can you cite me the $699 billion number?

[ctb619]

Where did you get the $450 billion from? DoD spending for 2007 is $699 billion.

"The budget requests $439.3 billion in discretionary budget authority for the Department of Defense, a seven percent increase over enacted fiscal 2006 funding levels."

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=9287

Where is the $699 billion figure from?

[ronpaulitician]

Here's what I ended up with for 2007:

DoD $439 billion
Homeland Security $58 billion
War in Iraq $135 billion
Operation Enhancing Freedom $37 billion
War on Drugs $40-50 billion
Interest payments $83 billion (2007 interest payments will be about $250 billion; our military budget makes up about a third of our total budget)
Healthcare for wounded war on terror, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan veterans ?
Economic cost of thousands of dead US service men and women ?

[ctb619]

Here's what I ended up with for 2007:

DoD $439 billion
Homeland Security $58 billion
War in Iraq $135 billion
Operation Enhancing Freedom $37 billion
War on Drugs $40-50 billion
Interest payments $83 billion (2007 interest payments will be about $250 billion; our military budget makes up about a third of our total budget)
Healthcare for wounded war on terror, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan veterans ?
Economic cost of thousands of dead US service men and women ?

nice

here is an interesting link that talks about the difficulty in trying to nail down the DoD numbers:

http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=3686&from_page=../program/document.cfm

[fletcher]

"The budget requests $439.3 billion in discretionary budget authority for the Department of Defense, a seven percent increase over enacted fiscal 2006 funding levels."

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=9287

Where is the $699 billion figure from?

I got the number form wikipedia. Definitely not definitive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget%2C_2007#2007_Military _Budget

[risiusj]

Our foreign aid to Israel and other countries isn't rolled in with that $trillion is it?

[ronpaulitician]

Our foreign aid to Israel and other countries isn't rolled in with that $trillion is it?
Good question.

This (http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/80151.pdf) appears to be 2008 foreign aid budget proposal.

Looks like (read "Google searches reveal that") we're giving about $3-5 billion a year to Israel (yeah, they're called loans, but have historically always been turned into grants, so "giving" is the operative verb).

[richard1984]

We sure are talking about a lot of money here....:eek: Whew! I'm worn out! :(
(not really, but you get my point...)

[MicroBalrog]

The Department of Energy, the Veterans administration, and a few others are just military spending by any other name.