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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The last U.S. combat forces were withdrawn from Iraq on Dec. 15, 2011.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 ...

Tom from St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote in to ask why our federal budget numbers don't combine funding for veterans with military spending, since they're both part of a larger national security category.

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. Let's settle this once and for all.

As the Pentagon scrambles to find ways to save money, the Defense Department has included in its fiscal year 2013 budget request a political bombshell – increasing beneficiary contributions to its healthcare programs.The Defense Department’s healthcare network – known as TRICARE – provides a range of benefit plans to active ...

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, ...

Kris from Concord, California, wrote in to ask how much aid the United States gives to foreign countries. Foreign aid and diplomacy together comprise around 1 percent of the federal budget, or $56 billion in President Obama’s 2013 budget request. That money goes toward global poverty alleviation, including a contribution ...