Pentagon's Black Budget tops $56 billion

Pentagon’s Black Budget Tops $56 Billion
By Noah Shachtman February 1, 2010

The Defense Department just released its king-sized, $708 billion budget for the next fiscal year. Much of the proposed spending is fairly detailed — noting exactly how many helicopters the Pentagon plans to buy and how many troops it plans on playing. But about $56 billion goes simply to “classified programs,” or to projects known only by their code names, like “Chalk Eagle” and “Link Plumeria.” That’s the Pentagon’s black budget.

Cobbling together this round figure for the military’s hush-hush projects is easier than it seems. The Pentagon’s separate ledgers for operations, research and procurement all contain line items for “classified programs.” Add those to the non-sensical, all-caps programs, and you’ve got yourself an estimate for the Pentagon’s secretive efforts.

Last year, that budget grew to more than $50 billion – ”the largest-ever sum,” according to Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman, a longtime black-budget seer. A few more billion were added for wartime operations, for a total of $54 billion. This year’total would be $2 billion higher, a 3.7 percent increase.

Not all of the Pentagon’s secret projects got a budget boost, however. Funds for the Cobra Judy missile-watching radar system were cut nearly in half, from $61 million to $36.5 million. Similar, money for the Navy’s Link Evergreen project was cut to $41 million, from $123 million.


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And we pay for it all!



Just my dos centavos

robdogbucky

for the entire defense budget. incredible........

- THE WARS
passed separately as extraordinary spending (another $120 billion or so per year)
- THE ENERGY DEPARTMENT
which mainly exists to manage fuel for the nuclear arsenal, $17 bn in FY 2010
- VETERANS BENEFITS
about $122 billion, we all support this of course but it's so high because of past wars
- NET INTEREST
$250 bn in FY 2010. Given that official "defense" is usually about half of the discretionary budget, given the origins of the deficits since 1980, and given that SS, Medicare and unemployment are all raised and spent separately at a SURPLUS, let's say $150 is thanks to past wars and "defense" spending.
- MILITARY RETIREMENT
$51 bn in FY 2010. Again, of course this should be spent, but it's still the consequence of past "defense" budgets.

= 460 BILLION DOLLARS IN FY 2010.

SO IT'S 1.16 TRILLION FOR THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.

Go here to see the full budget.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html?hp

Click upper left on "Hide Mandatory Spending," which excludes stuff that is mandated by law separately from the discretionary budget. (Remember, most mandatory spending, like SS and Medicare, is raised by separate charges, paid back to the same people it's raised from, and currently operating at a SURPLUS.)

The resulting graphic tells you where federal income tax really goes: mostly to the Pentagon for its fabulous round-the-world projects. Remember, if we're not bombing stuff on the other side of the planet all the time, we'll be in BIG trouble.

"National Defense" and you missed the $4.75B that goes to the Corps of Engineers (under "Natural Resources"). Oh, and the DOE's got another $5B in science research programs (under "General Sciences").

Apparently, over time, that's equal to three "normal" budget cycles!

If any of us citizens kept our financial records and books in such shape..we would be going to jail.