ABSTRACT
A decision to pay or not to pay for something has direct implications for the ability of the United States to carry out the policy that the requested expenditure was to support. The constitutional framework within which the US defense decision-making process operates is quite simple. It also has little relationship to the way decisions are made and policy is actually formulated. The purpose of the Defense Department can best be described as the maintenance and employment of the military, as directed by the president through the secretary of defense and in response to the mandate of the Congress. The relationship between the military departments and the Office of the Secretary of Defense can almost be seen as a zero-sum game; what the military departments lost, the Office of the Secretary of Defense picked up. The Department of Defense is only one of the actors in the process of defense decision-making.
