The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, taken from an airplane in January 2008. Wikipedia
Michael Rainey, Fiscal Times: 7 Big Pentagon Numbers in the $1.3 Trillion Spending Deal
The Department of Defense is one of the biggest winners in the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill working its way through Congress, with the Pentagon receiving $700 billion for the current fiscal year, a $61 billion increase from 2017.
House Speaker Paul Ryan emphasized the Pentagon funding Thursday, calling the spending package “the Trump-Jim Mattis budget,” a reference to the secretary of defense.
The base Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2018 is $590 billion, with an additional $65 billion for the defense component of the Overseas Contingency Operations fund and the remainder appropriated to defense-related activities in other federal agencies. The total is $80 billion higher than the funding levels defined by the 2011 Budget Control Act, which lawmakers agreed to bust through this year and next. Some critics have charged that the spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act have resulted in serious maintenance problems for the military.
Here are some of the big Defense budget numbers and what the money will buy:
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WNU Editor: The $89.2 billion for research and development is the number that caught my eye. That is a lot of money for R&D.
