050 National Defense:Cut Funding for Non-Combat Related Research

Sources

Savings are expressed as budget authority and include a total of program and grant costs based on FY 2015 figures from “Department of Defense Budget Fiscal Year 2015: RDT&E Programs (R-1),” March 2014, and open DOD grant opportunities found at Federal Grants. Total savings figures for 2016–2025 have been increased at the same rate as discretionary spending growth, according to the CBO’s most recent August 2014 baseline.

Technical Notes on Scoring

CBO Baseline

Unless otherwise noted, calculations for savings for each recommendation relies on the most recent Congressional Budget Office baseline, as found in “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024,” published August 27, 2014, has been used.

Savings “Totals”

While totals for the five and 10 year savings are provided by section and for the complete set of recommendations, there are two reasons they should not be viewed as representing total savings for The Budget Book.

First, as noted in the introduction, The Heritage Foundation would recommend that the savings realized in the Function 050 Defense section would stay within the Department of Defense to strengthen the nation’s defense capabilities.

Second, the numbers cannot be deemed to represent the realized savings if every single recommendation were adopted because policy changes made in one program can impact spending levels in other programs.  Thus, the numbers in the table do not reflect any potential interactions between the various policy changes affecting spending or savings.