How much does the US spend on security each year? Taking everything into account, and including the Pentagon military base budget and overseas contingency operations (foreign wars), intelligence, Department of State, past wars that have to be paid off, etc, the total comes out to $1.2 trillion, according to Chris Hellman, of the National Priorities Project.
That's a good base number to keep in mind during talk of sequestration (obligatory spending cuts if no budgets are agreed to).
