While military spending (not counting veterans' benefits) in 2015 was around 16% of the total US federal budget[1,2], it made up 53.71% of the discretionary spending budget, dwarfing the next closest category, "government", at 6.54%.
From the BusinessInsider link below:
"The military budget is by far the largest single cost displayed. It is almost six times larger than the 2015 education budget and it is more than 34 times the size of NASA's 2015 operating budget. In total, the costs of running the military amount to approximately 16% of the overall 2015 US budget."
In 2016, the US Military Spending was roughly HALF of the Discretionary Spending of the budget, which you are correct, in that it totaled ~1.15 Trillion
The US is budgeted to spend $637 billion on the military in 2015. If the same is true for 2016-2019, the US will have spent $2.5 trillion. If you include 2020, then it's more than $3 trillion.
> The government expects to spend $6.011 trillion in 2022. More than 65% of that pays for mandated benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
> Military spending includes the Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Veterans Affairs. All of these military costs combined equal $943.9 billion.
> Pensions are entitlements and we can't really touch those.
They are touched all the time. Implicitly via decreased purchasing power of currency that is not made up for via cost of living adjustments, and explicitly via things like increasing retirement age and changes to benefit formula.
Healthcare spending is also frequently adjusted via reduced remuneration and policies for remuneration to providers changing the quantity and quality of services received.
In fiscal year 2015, Pentagon and related spending will total $598 billion, accounting for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending. That's roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined.
military spending is greater than 50% of discretionary spending, which is 29% of the budget iirc. Which means military spending is around 15-16% of total spending.
US budget for 2015 was 3.688 trillion USD[0]. There are many things that are possible, but US army spending nearly double of the entire US budget without anyone noticing isn't one of them.
I suspect you're only counting discretionary spending, when you should be counting all federal government spending, as important programs like Medicare are non-discretionary. Overall, the military is less than 20 percent of federal spending in the US.
It is not a question of spending money on military, it is a question of how much. Last I checked, the US military budget is around 700B, while healthcare, education etc account for a tenth of that amount. Another question is, how much of this eye popping amount is wasted?
That's a rather misleading statement. Discretionary spending makes up less than a third of the federal budget. Defense spending works out to about 15% of federal spending overall. Confusion seems to arise because mandatory spending programs (like social security, medicare, medicaid, and the VA) are budgeted separately, as is the interest paid on federal government debt.
The United States spent $609 billion on defense last year. Surely it's possible to make the case for DOD cutbacks without misleading statistics.
US military spending is HUGE compared to other countries budgets. It is not that big compared to the US budget - in WW2 we spent about 45% of GDP on military stuff - if that was done today we'd have a budget of about ten trillion dollars.
Also much of what is classified as military spending could probably be moved to other categories - the VA, for example.
The military budget isn't the entirety of military spending. It doesn't include the VA budget, the DOE budget (maintaining those nukes), the actual cost of wars themselves, etc.
Adding up all the parts, it's pretty close to a trillion a year - about 933 billion.
I believe you are incorrect about the US Army’s percent of the federal budget. Total defense spending (all branches) represents around 15% of the budget.
From the BusinessInsider link below:
"The military budget is by far the largest single cost displayed. It is almost six times larger than the 2015 education budget and it is more than 34 times the size of NASA's 2015 operating budget. In total, the costs of running the military amount to approximately 16% of the overall 2015 US budget."
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-defense-budget-is-mass...
[2] https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...
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