Costs of National Security in the U.S.

The costs of national security are wide-ranging. National security could include everything from economic security to the costs of war. Our counters show the costs of the United States’ war on terrorism since September 11, 2001.

For Total Cost of War Since 2001, taxpayers in the United States are paying $4.93 trillion. For Military in 2018, taxpayers in the United States are paying $712.55 billion. Here's what those tax dollars could have paid for instead: Trade off Tool.

National Priorities Project is the only nonprofit, non-partisan federal budget research organization in the US with the mission to make the federal budget accessible to the American public. In 2014, NPP was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the pioneering work to track federal spending on the military and promote a U.S. federal budget that represents Americans' priorities, including funding for people's issues such as inequality, unemployment, education, health and the need to build a green economy.