Report of the Task Force on A Unified Security Budget for the United States

Report of the Task Force on A Unified Security Budget for the United States. Foreign Policy In Focus of the Institute for Policy Studies, August 2010

  • Since 2004, this Task Force has been reporting on the balance of our security budget. There is improvement to report this year. The Obama administration deserves credit for submitting a budget for FY 2011 that narrows the gap between military and non-military security spending from its FY 2010 request: from 8:1 in its budget request for FY 2010 to just under 7:1 in its request for FY 2011. Most of this improvement is due to substantial increases in its request for international affairs: $14.6 billion, or nearly 29 percent. While the administration increased its request for the military by a larger total amount—over twice as much, or $35.9 billion— this represented a much smaller proportional increase, 6.6 percent, to a much larger budget. These changes narrowed the difference between the budgets for offense and prevention from 17:1 last year to 12:1 this year. It is important to note, however, that the largest portions of the increase in the prevention budget— about 60 percent—have been directed to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
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