Discretionary Spending
Function 050 - National Defense
Reduce the Department of Defense's Annual Budget
CBO periodically issues a compendium of policy options (called Options for Reducing the Deficit) covering a broad range of issues, as well as separate reports that include options for changing federal tax and spending policies in particular areas. This option appears in one of those publications. The options are derived from many sources and reflect a range of possibilities. For each option, CBO presents an estimate of its effects on the budget but makes no recommendations. Inclusion or exclusion of any particular option does not imply an endorsement or rejection by CBO.
Billions of dollars | 2025 | 2026 | 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | 2031 | 2032 | 2033 | 2034 | 2025– | 2025– | |
Change in spending | |||||||||||||
Budget authority | 0 | -28 | -57 | -88 | -120 | -154 | -161 | -165 | -170 | -175 | -293 | -1,118 | |
Outlays | 0 | -15 | -38 | -64 | -93 | -125 | -143 | -153 | -161 | -167 | -210 | -959 | |
This option would take effect in October 2025.
Estimates of outlay savings displayed in the table reflect the Congressional Budget Office's assessment of how quickly total funding provided to the Department of Defense would be spent and do not reflect the details of any particular alternative.
Each year, the Department of Defense (DoD) provides the Congress with a budget request designed to align military forces to the National Security Strategy within fiscal constraints. In its 2025 budget request, DoD requested $850 billion to support a force of 1.3 million active-component military personnel. DoD's request represents 49 percent of all proposed discretionary funding requested for that year. In its analysis of the long-term implications of the 2025 defense budget, the Congressional Budget Office projects that, under DoD's current plans, funding for defense programs would be $1,093 billion in 2034 (or $921 billion in 2025 dollars).
DoD's 2025 plan is estimated to cost about $9,610 billion over 10 years ($8,810 billion in 2025 dollars). This option would reduce DoD's funding by $1,118 billion over that 10-year period (about $1,000 billion in 2025 dollars). This option could be implemented in different ways. The number of active-component military personnel could be reduced by about 17 percent by 2034 relative to the 2025 force, leaving the current composition (by unit type) of the force unchanged. The reduction also could be achieved in many other ways, such as reducing ground combat and air combat units (including brigade combat teams, infantry battalions, tactical aviation squadrons, and aircraft carriers and airwings), further reducing the number of active military personnel, or further de-emphasizing the use of U.S. combat forces and instead relying on allies to provide more of their own defense.