Do we spend $1 trillion a year on foreign policy? That was a claim
recently made by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). The statement got the attention
of the folks over at Politifact. They reviewed it, and they found it to be true:
We
consulted numerous defense budget experts on the issue. They all
agreed that it depends largely on how one defines “foreign policy.”
Changing the definition means changing the programs that one includes in
the calculation, which impacts the total amount.
Winslow
Wheeler from the Center for Defense Information sent us a table which
details the “U.S. security” expenses for 2010. The total comes out to
$1021.3 billion, slightly over $1 trillion. The calculation includes
the interest on the Department of Defense Retiree Health Care Fund and
on debt-financed defense spending.
Cindy Williams, a principal
research scientist at the MIT Security Studies Program told us to check
out her presentation on historical U.S. defense and foreign affairs
spending trends. Looking at projected spending for the year 2010,
summing up national defense programs, homeland security programs, and
international affairs initiatives totals $841 billion. Add in the VA
budget of $125 billion and we get $966 billion. Williams said that she
wouldn’t include the interest payments attributable to past
debt-financed defense spending in her own analysis, “since there is no
good way to judge whether debt accumulated because we spent too much on
security, or because we raised too little in taxes.”
We also
checked with Stephen Donahoe from the Friends Committee on National
Legislation, an anti-war lobby. Donahoe told us that their own
calculations do not include the entire State Department budget. Still,
taking into account Pentagon spending and money that goes into nuclear
defense programs, Veterans Affairs, interest payments on defense-related
debt, and other related expenses that are scattered throughout the
budget, the group arrives at about $1 trillion. The committee
acknowledges on its website that the number varies across groups that
track defense spending.
