A black budget is a budget that is secretly collected from the overall income of a nation, a corporation, a society of any form, a national department, and so on. A black budget usually covers expenses related to military research. The budget is kept secret for national security reasons.
Philip Schneider claimed that the alleged "Dulce Base" in the U.S. state of New Mexico is run by such a budget. Many other programs such as Area 51 in Groom Lake, Nevada, and many experimental or covert military programs as well are said to be run by black budgets.
The United States Department of Defense has a black budget it uses to fund black projects—expenditures it does not want to disclose publicly. The annual cost of the United States Department of Defense black budget was estimated at $32 billion in 2008 but was increased to an estimated $50 billion in 2009.
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or budget:
“And my eyes are blue;
So ferry me across the water,
Do, boatman, do!”
“Step into my ferry-boat,
Be they black or blue,”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
“The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)