The top recognized honest authority on U.S. military spending is Winslow T. Wheeler, and on May 1st he deciphered the OMB’s detailed tables of U.S.Government funds for the U.S. military that have been authorized by Congress and the President for this fiscal year, and also the President’s planned U.S. federal spending on that for the next fiscal year. He headlined “The US National Security Budget for 2023/24 is” “approximately $1.5 Trillion”. In his detailed explanations there, he states — which has previously been noted many times by Robert Higgs and other such experts — that unlike the military spending by other governments, the U.S. Government is paying for much of its military though other Departments than merely the nation’s official military department, which in the U.S. is the “Defense Department.” For example, much of ours is paid for by the Treasury Department, the Veterans Affairs Department, the Homeland Security Department, the State Department, and others.
His exact figures for America’s military are: $1.447.7 trillion authorized for this year, and $1.510.3 trillion requested for next year. For the current year, Wheeler uses the reported authorized U.S. Defense Department (DOD) spending of $848.8 billion, but in the latest U.S. DOD statement on that, dated 14 March 2023, the “Total” for “FY 2023 Enacted” (shown on page 9) is actually “851.8” or 3 billion dollars more. It has changed many times during the past few months, but whatever it will be, will be cited by SIPRI and the other billionaire-funded think tanks on that, as including all of U.S. military sending, which it certainly does not. Those think tanks cooperate with the U.S. Government in order to fool the global public to think that America’s military expenditure is less than 40% of the world’s, when it is actually more than 50% of the world’s. Currently, the U.S. Government spends around 53% of all of its congressionally and Presidentially authorized (or “discretionary”) annual spending on its military, and only 47% on all other purposes. And, currently, the U.S. Government also spends around half of all of the world’s military expenditures. Approximately 26% of America’s approximately $1.5T annual ‘defense’ (aggression) expenditures go to pay its armaments manufacturers. Currently, America has 900 foreign military bases, and 749 U.S. military bases. Either this situation will continue and we will go into World War Three, or else there will be an enormous change and overthrow of the U.S. military-industrial complex, which was started on 25 July 1945 when U.S. President Harry S. Truman became persuaded, by his personal hero General Dwight Eisenhower, that if the U.S. wouldn’t become the world’s first-ever global empire, then the Soviet Union would. It’s coming to a head now, and no one yet can reasonably say whether it will produce nuclear annihilation or instead a second American revolution (an overthrow and replacement of the Truman-Eisenhower, or post-WW-II, American Government, the military-industrial-complex controlled U.S. Government). Right now, polls show that the American public have no knowledge of any of this, and will likely continue to be led around by their billionaires, who, collectively, will make the final decision.
This is also directly a very costly ignorance. At The Duran, where I post each of my articles directly, a “Tom Welch” commented: “For reference, $1.5 trillion ($1.5 million million) is about $4,500 for every man, woman, and child in the USA. For defence against what? The USA is threatened by no one, except for angry and desperate people whom the US government has injured – usually by killing or maiming their nearest and dearest, or destroying their homes.” I replied: “All of that is correct. As can be seen at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/aLRRq, 1.5 trillion /330 million = 4,545 (rounded to the nearest whole number). It is $4,545 per year per person, or (given that a U.S. ‘household’ is now averaging 2.5 persons, as shown at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/GPpw7), that is $11,362.50 per U.S. household, which is being paid annually for America’s military.”
By Eric Zuesse