Several of our Pixstory partners have requested that we share information on how the US Government allocates funding.  To begin this series, we want to introduce the term “discretionary spending.”  Discretionary spending is ”…the part of federal spending that lawmakers control through annual appropriation acts…or about 35 percent of federal outlays. Just over half of that spending was for defense programs; the rest paid for an array of nondefense activities.”  Many of the programs and services that companies compete for, whether it be a contract or a grant, fall under discretionary spending.  As depicted in the chart above, in 2019, discretionary spending for defense was $676 billion, while nondefense spending was $661 billion.