Budget Matters Blog

President Obama was in Columbus, OH this week, talking about funding for education. Just by coincidence, so was I.NPP, along with Peace Action, sponsored the first of our “Move the Money” training sessions where we’re gathering local activists to help them integrate information about the federal budget into the work they’re doing. We were joined by representatives of groups in the Columbus area working on health care reform, economic justice, funding for human needs programs, cutting Pentagon spending, and preserving the environment, among other issues.Not surprisingly, the #1 most important issue on the minds of everyone ...

If there was ever any doubt that the U.S. federal budget would claim center-stage in the 2012 presidential race, it vanished with Mitt Romney's selection of House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) as the GOP Vice Presidential nominee.

Although Mitt Romney has emphasized he will run on a Romney budget, not a Ryan budget, he has already endorsed central elements of Ryan's plan – such as significant cuts to Medicaid and education – and has indicated that the Congressman will play a lead role in shaping the Romney/Ryan platform.

Paul Ryan's federal budget proposal includes sweeping changes ...

The week of July 16 was a big one in Washington for Pentagon watchers. The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to approve the fiscal year 2013 Defense Appropriations bill, while the House Armed Services Committee held hearings on the potential impact of upcoming spending cuts on the Pentagon’s budget.The FY2013 defense appropriations legislation includes $519 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $88 billion for funding related to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House passed the bill by a vote of 326 to 90.

Surprising to many, the House also adopted a ...

C. Chandler of Newcastle, WA, asks, “I keep hearing how bad these automatic spending cuts will be for the Pentagon. Will any other programs get cut?”We get a LOT of questions about the automatic spending cuts – known as sequestration – called for under the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011. Under current law, the BCA will trigger automatic across-the-board discretionary spending cuts at the end of this year that will result in $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade.“Discretionary spending” refers to spending that is newly appropriated each year through Congress's annual appropriations process, and it ...

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, National Priorities Project has tracked the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have focused on the tax dollars expended related to the conduct of these wars, and offered comparisons to funding for other government programs to demonstrate the opportunity costs of these expenditures.But wars are not ultimately about dollars, they are about people. As my colleague Mattea Kramer wrote recently, there are good reasons for keeping funding for veterans programs separate from the Pentagon's budget. But it is also true that the support our veterans ...

The last U.S. combat forces were withdrawn from Iraq on Dec. 15, 2011. And this past week at the NATO summit in Chicago, member nations endorsed President Obama’s plan to remove most foreign combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Yet the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and the winding down of military operations in Afghanistan does not mean the end of the U.S. presence or war-related funding. U.S. taxpayers will continue to provide funding for Iraq and Afghanistan for years into the future. The Defense Department will continue to provide weapons ...

All sorts of great questions come in on our Facebook page. One question we hear a lot is, How much of the federal budget actually goes to the military? In some charts, you see that military is more than half the budget. But in others, you see that it's much less than that. This week at National Priorities Project we're talking about all different kinds of budget pies, so this is our chance: Let's settle this once and for all.

Out of the total federal budget, the military accounts for around 18 percent.

But then there's ...

As the Pentagon scrambles to find ways to save money, the Defense Department has included in its fiscal year 2013 budget request a bombshell – increasing beneficiary contributions to its health care programs.The Defense Department’s health care network – known as TRICARE – provides a range of benefit plans to active duty military personnel, their dependents and survivors and military retirees. And like private health insurance programs, the costs of these benefits have skyrocketed in recent years, creating a significant financial burden for the military.

According to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, "health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive ...

Nancy Albert, of San Juan, Puerto Rico asks how much do we spend on the CIA, and where in the budget would you find that money?The short answer is, we don't know. Now here's the longer answer, which includes what we do know about what the government spends on intelligence, including the Central Intelligence Agency.U.S. intelligence activities are funded through two budget pots – the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the Military Intelligence Program (MIP).NIP "topline" funding (that is, the total amount spent) has been a matter of public record since 2007. Prior to that ...

On February 14, 2012 the Obama Administration released its proposed Fiscal Year 2013 budget for the federal government. The request includes $525.4 billion for the Department of Defense (DoD) in Fiscal Year 2013, which begins on October 1, 2012. Adjusted for inflation, this is 2.6 percent below FY2012 levels, the first real decrease in the Pentagon's annual "base" budget in over a decade.The Defense Department plans to reduce spending by a total of $259 billion over five years and $487 billion over ten years. These figures do not include funding for the nuclear weapons activities of ...