"STATE OF INSECURITY: The Cost of Militarization Since 9/11" ~~ Lindsay Koshgarian, Ashik Siddique, and Lorah Steichen

https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/State-of-Insecurity-The-Cost-of-Militarization-Since-911.pdf

~~ posted for dmorista with introduction by dmorista ~~

Introduction by dmorista

"STATE OF INSECURITY" is a report / position paper from the Institute for Policy Studies.  It enumerates the $21 Trillion spent during the general militarization by the Federal Government since 9-11; that includes the following categories: Military $16.26 trillion; Veterans $3.07 trillion;  Homeland security $949 billion; Federal law enforcement $732 billion.  For a total of  $21.02 trillion.

Of course this enumeration does not include the intangible costs such as the long term effects on children who lost their fathers, or the effects on people who lost their spouses, children, or grandchildren.

 

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Excerpt below:

 

ABOUT THE NUMBERS 

 

The military is one of the most costly government functions. For our purposes, military expenses include the Department of Defense (DoD) and all direct costs of war, nuclear weapons activities at the Department of Energy and elsewhere, intelligence expenses including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), international military assistance, military retiree benefits and the selective service system, and smaller military-related expenses at the National Science Foundation, Maritime Administration, and other federal agencies. We include the cost of veterans’ benefits because military service and military activities give rise to the need for these benefits. We include most programs in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because of the agency’s origins in the post-9/11 response, and because of its core mission to safeguard the country and borders from external threats. Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is situated within DHS, we exclude it from this analysis. While FEMA does execute some counterterrorism and militarized programs, as the largest single agency within DHS, a large proportion of dollars spent by FEMA over the past 20 years have gone toward natural disaster response and prevention, not internal or external violent threats, and we do not consider its core mission to be a militarized one. Federal law enforcement programs are included because counterterrorism and border security are part of their core mission, and because the militarization of police and the proliferation of mass incarceration both owe much to the activities and influences of federal law enforcement. Federal law enforcement agencies use the same militarized tactics to combat terrorism, crime, and narcotics, with frequently violent and racially inequitable results. Federal law enforcement agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Agency, and U.S. Marshals operate both in and outside of the U.S., frequently cooperating with the DoD.2 We excluded most revenue sources for these programs, meaning that the numbers shown reflect gross, not net, costs. While most of these programs bring in a small amount of revenue compared to their costs, this means that in some cases, any program cuts might result in some revenue losses, as well. Unless otherwise noted, all figures in this report are based on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) budget authority data and are inflation-adjusted to FY 2021.