You may have heard of the Golden Rule, which usually means "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But there's a slightly different version which

You may have heard of the Golden Rule, which usually means "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But there's a slightly different version which runs: "He who has the gold makes the rules". This is the case in funding the US Department of Defense. The overall budget is set by the Congress (and subdivided innumerable times afterwards by the DoD agencies and departments), so saying that civilians control the military in the US is both true in the operational sense (the military is part of the Executive Branch, and thus under the President, a civilian), but also in a financial sense. More info about the US budget process (which bears a strong resemblance to making sausage..) can be found here: http://budget.house.gov/budgetprocess/ http://budget.house.gov/budgetprocess/