CBO: Military deployments on U.S. cities cost $496M in second half of 2025
Jan. 28 (UPI) — Deploying National Guard and other military troops in U.S. cities cost taxpayers nearly $500 million in the second half of 2025, the Congressional Budget Office reported Wednesday.
The cost breakdown includes the cost to activate, deploy and pay National Guard personnel; related operational, logistical and sustainment costs; and other direct and indirect costs of deploying National Guard and other military units, such as the U.S. Marine Corps, the CBO report shows.
Since June, the CBO said the Trump administration deployed National Guard troops and active-duty Marines to the nation’s capital, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis and Portland, Ore.
The administration also kept 200 National Guard personnel deployed in Texas after they left Chicago.
“CBO estimates that those deployments (excluding the one to New Orleans, which occurred at the end of the year) cost a total of approximately $496 million through the end of December 2025,” the CBO said in a letter to Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.
“The costs of those or other deployments in the future are highly uncertain, mainly because the scale, length and location of such deployments are difficult to predict accurately,” the CBO said.
“That uncertainty is compounded by legal challenges, which have stopped deployments to some cities, and by changes in the administration’s policies.”
Merkley is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on the Budget and asked the CBO to provide a cost breakdown of National Guard deployments in U.S. cities.
“The American people deserve to know how many hundreds of millions of their hard-earned dollars have been and are being wasted on Trump’s reckless and haphazard deployment of National Guard troops to Portland and cities across the country,” Merkley said Wednesday in a prepared statement.
The CBO further estimated the cost for continuing such deployments would be $93 million per month, including between $18 million and $21 million per month per city to deploy 1,000 National Guardsmen in 2026.
The cost breakdown includes healthcare, military pay and benefits, plus lodging, food and transportation costs.
“CBO does not expect the military to incur significant costs to operate and maintain equipment during domestic deployments,” the report said.
“So far, such deployments appear to mainly involve foot patrols conducted by small units, without the extensive types of supporting forces or heavy equipment associated with operations in combat zones.”
CBO officials also do not expect the Department of Defense to incur new equipment costs for the deployments.