An integrated national security budget?

The idea is daring and daunting - in Washington, budgets are the sinews of power.  The details of the CAP plan are here: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/06/less_is_more.html

 

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The Center for American Progress (CAP) has proposed a "unified national security budget encompassing defense, diplomacy, and development." The unified budget would compile funding across various federal departments so that priorities could better be compared and resources better allocated by taking funds from the Department of Defense budget and putting them into under-funded services like the Coast Guard and agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development.

 

The report is mostly about USAID, CAP stating that -- "the additional provision of $10 billion in USAID’s budget alongside a $40 billion reduction in defense spending would allow for major improvements in three key areas:

• Restoring a professional workforce

• Strengthening its “fundamental” development assistance capacity

• Improving the agency’s ability to prevent and respond to disasters