President Obama presented the American Jobs Act of 2011 on September 8th and sent it to Congress on September 12th. Want to know what it's all about? Here’s the rundown. How does it help… the unemployed? It makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against unemployed job applicants because of ...

10 numbers you need to know: $1.26 Trillion – Total amount appropriated by Congress for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of Fiscal Year 2011 (September 30, 2011) – $797.3 billion for Iraq and $459.8 billion for Afghanistan. $7.6 Trillion – The total amount spent on “security” ...

The White House Office of Public Engagement has scheduled a series of ten state calls (see list and specific invitation below). Note there are two calls today (Wednesday) for folks in California and Colorado and the rest through the end of this week. You are welcome to forward this invitation ...

NOTE: This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.com.The killing of Osama Bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt-ceiling debate finally did. And mild as those projected cuts might have been, last week newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging ...

In the midst of Congressional debates about debt, budget cuts, and tax increases, a “penny poll” was held in every Maine county asking participants, “How would you like your federal tax dollars spent?” Mainers Larry Dansinger and Lisa Savage were among the leading coordinators of this effort.Education, health care, and ...

A new indicator is now available in the Federal Priorities Database: Department of Defense Personnel: Number of civilian, military, and reserve national guard personnel employed by the Department of Defense.

We've added another federal expenditure to the Federal Priorities Database: Department of Defense Procurement Contracts: amount of procurement contracts awarded by the Department of Defense (by vendor location).

Earlier this week I went to Washington, D.C. for the international conference of RESULTS, a nonpartisan organization working to end hunger and poverty by empowering individuals to exercise their personal and political power. The goal of RESULTS is captured in this quote by former Oregon Republican Senator Mark Hatfield:“We stand ...

That’s the message that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates got from President Hamid Karzai when he visited Afghanistan in December 2009. At that time, President Karzai told Sec. Gates that the Afghan government would not be able to shoulder the costs of the nation’s new security forces – both national ...

Last week NPP published "U.S. Security Spending Since 9/11," an analysis of total federal spending on defense and homeland security since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The key findings of the report were:The United States has spent more than $7.6 trillion on defense and homeland security since the ...