Military Spending
- Peace Notes Summer 2023
The latest PEC newsletter is out! We discuss the current state of gun violence prevention laws, military spending, upcoming local events, and the too-dang high rent! - Hartung & Gledhill, Throwing More Money at the Pentagon
More than half of the taxpayer dollars that Congress appropriates every year now goes into what passes for “defense” in this country. - National Defense Authorization Act for 2024
- The Immorality of the U.S. Government’s Budget
April, the month tax filings are due, prompts us to ponder what our income taxes pay for. Are they used to provide all citizens sufficient resources and public goods for human security and well-being — the core of our national security?
The Peace Education Center works towards educating the public about military spending.
Click the picture below to see a talk sponsored by the Peace Education Center with William Hartung, Director of Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy from January 23, 2018.
Since the end of World War II, the US has continued to build its military to the point where we spend more than the next seven countries combined every year. Even with the end of the Cold War there was little savings captured and redirected to human needs. The extreme waste is legion with the most recent Pentagon’s own study indicating $125 billion in waste. Yet no one knows for sure because the Pentagon has not been audited – the only department in the federal government that gets a free pass. By some estimates the US spends more than $1 trillion a year with our military footprint if you include veterans benefits, overseas contingent spending (paying for ongoing wars), black box spending, foreign military assistance, intelligence, and nuclear weapons. President Trump seems to be saying it isn’t enough.
The resources listed below will help serious citizens get a glimpse of the military spending behemoth and direct them to getting involved.
National Priorities Project collects and analyses spending data for military and domestic programs and develops short fact sheets and very useful graphics to depict the trends and alternatives.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is a long time research institute that gathers and analyses military spending and its impacts from nations around the world. It has decades of data and thus provides an excellent resource for looking at trends.
Center for Defense Information is now a part of the Project on Government Oversight. It gives ongoing analysis of defense issues collected from multiple sources.
World Beyond War is a global citizen response to war. If you feel you are alone in wanting to end war, take a look at this site and realize there are others around the world seeking to end war and militarism.