A penny here, a penny there

And before you know it, you're looking at a $1 trillion defense budget. 

Now I know that the the Pentagon’s base budget is $530 billion, but there are a number of defense items not included in this budget. 

Let's start out with the most obvious - the cost of the wars. It has averaged more than $100 billion a year. 

You would think nuclear weapons would be part of the defense budget. Think again. That $18 billion is in the budget of the Department of Energy. The very name, Homeland Security, implies defense. The budget for DHS is $35.5 billion. But there is another $13.5 billion squirreled away in other departments. 

What about “international security assistance”? Bump it by $10 billion. Veterans? $138 billion. Civilian retirees from DOD? $21 billion. 

We're very close to $1 trillion.