As President Obama allowed a trickle of troops back into Iraq, and air strikes are expected to continue for weeks or months, Americans are wary about our role in a conflict most of us think we never should have started in the first place. Polls show that while Americans are divided on new airstrikes in Iraq, most are against sending troops back.

Competing funding proposals to deal with the border crisis express vastly different priorities about border security, refugee assistance, and legal representation, echoing the deep divisions about immigration reform overall.

One of the most enduring myths about the federal budget is that a significant portion of it goes overseas in the form of foreign aid.  In fact, foreign aid is about one percent of the federal budget.

The Pentagon’s most expensive weapons system in history, the infamous F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, was recently grounded. 

How will the United States choose to respond to instability in Iraq, where ISIS is at the center of renewed conflict?

With Independence Day this week, Americans are celebrating all the things that make our country great. A patriotic mindset begs the question of how our involvement in conflicts overseas – like responding to crisis in Iraq – defines our country’s priorities.

What’s the cost of the Iraq war to taxpayers in your town? If you could reallocate those tax dollars, what would you buy instead? NPP's easy-to-use, localizable federal budget data can answer these questions and many more.

 In 12 short weeks, NPP and Peace Action has visited 4 states and reached more than 60 participants with our groundbreaking "Move the Money" trainings, encouraging local communities to engage in the federal budget process, learn about current spending priorities, and develop strategies for how to change them.

Over the past decade, American taxpayers have sunk more than $816 billion into funding the war in Iraq. 

We recently re-launched a major portion of our website, organizing our federal budget research content into eight issue areas. This week, we bring you key highlights on military and security spending.