US military budget 2011: One Trillion Dollars

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Since 2000 the US military budget has risen 9% per year. This coincided with the 'War on Terror' and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The question is, what would beneficiaries of such an incredible budget be prepared to see happen in order to ensure that this budget was never cut?

US gross domestic product 2009 $14,256,275,000,000 or $14 trillion. So one out of 14 $ earned in the US that year went to military related spending.

Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 25–29% of budgeted expenditures and 38–44% of estimated tax revenues. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000–2009.

Is it surprising that millions of Americans want to 'take back their government'? Surely since Roman or Medieval times state expenditure on the military has not been so high as a proportion of spending.

Budget Breakdown for 2011
Defense-related expenditure↓ 2011 Budget request & Mandatory spending[1][15]↓ Calculation[6][16]↓
DOD spending $721.3 billion Base budget + "Overseas Contingency Operations"
FBI counter-terrorism $2.7 billion At least one-third FBI budget.
International Affairs $10.1–$54.2 billion At minimum, foreign arms sales. At most, entire State budget
Energy Department, defense-related $20.9 billion
Veterans Affairs $66.2 billion
Homeland Security $54.7 billion
NASA, satellites $3.4–$8.5 billion Between 20% and 50% of NASA's total budget
Veterans pensions $58.4 billion
Other defense-related mandatory spending $7.5 billion
Interest on debt incurred in past wars $57.7–$228.1 billion Between 23% and 91% of total interest
Total Spending $1.003–$1.223 trillion


The 2009 U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined and is over nine times larger than the military budget of China.

For 2011

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.

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.[20] Military funding's share of discretionary funding was 50.5% in 2003, and has risen steadily ever since.[21]

For FY 2010, Department of Defense spending amounts to 4.7% of GDP.