Health Care Pressures Defense Budget

While President Obama’s $668 billion defense budget request for Fiscal 2010 reflects a historic high level of funding, there are implications beyond the future years defense plan since increased personnel costs, particularly for health care, will begin to crowd out other areas of the budget, suggests a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. In Fiscal 2010, health care accounts for about $47 billion of the defense request and, at its current rate of growth, is on track to nearly double every 10 years, Todd Harrison, CSBA fellow, told journalists during an Aug. 12 briefing in Washington, D.C. Continue