Center Offers Details and Analysis of Obama Administration's Defense Budget
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 8, 2009
CONTACT: Travis Sharp
Washington, D.C. -- In response to the Obama administration’s release of its Fiscal Year 2010 Pentagon spending request, the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation released today a detailed budget analysis.
The complete analysis is available online.
Consistent with the budget blueprints released on March 2, the administration is requesting $533.8 billion for the Department of Defense base budget and $130 billion for “Overseas Contingency Operations” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These numbers do not include funding for nuclear weapons through the Department of Energy or miscellaneous non-DOD defense costs, which totaled approximately $23 billion in FY 2009.
Adjusted for inflation, the $533.8 billion request is $9 billion, or 1.7 percent, more than Congress approved for the Defense Department for FY 2009.
“The Obama administration’s budget request continues the pattern of growth in defense spending, though notably at a lower rate than we saw during the years of the Bush administration,” said Chris Hellman, military policy fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
The $130 billion in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan marks the first time the war costs have been a part of the White House’s annual budget request.
“Until now, the government has funded military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through special supplemental appropriations packages,” Hellman added. “The Obama administration identified with its first supplemental request that it would also be the administration’s last. The inclusion of war funding up front is a welcome change and offers opportunity for greater transparency and oversight of our defense spending priorities.”
The Center’s complete analysis of the budget request, which also explores details on the funding of specific weapons programs, is available online.
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