Last month, Congress passed a defense budget that will cost American taxpayers over $500 billion dollars...and when you add in the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the numbers get closer to $1 trillion. To put these numbers in context, the United States spends more than the next 45 highest spending countries in the world combined. In our own budget, the defense portion of the budget (again, minus the wars) takes up 54% of the money that Congress has available to spend this year.