Since 2000, the total budget for military compensation has been rising steadily, even though the number of military personnel and veterans has been declining. Spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has accounted for most of that increase, rising from a small fraction of the total to about 60 percent of military compensation in the President’s 2024 budget request.

In the 2024 budget request, total military compensation is $551 billion. (Of that total, $230 billion is for the Department of Defense and $321 billion is for VA.) That amount represents an increase of 144 percent since 1980 (and 134 percent since 1999) after removing the effects of inflation.