Read the rest of that sentence, I outline how SCOTUS has an effect on your life without being a DIRECT effect. There's a difference between manifestations and DIRECT effect.
No you don't. You yourself do not activly give money to medicare, your employer pays money on your behalf. If you directly pay it show me the check stubs.
I said nothing about secretive, I said large and many faceted. Every single year during the budget argument somebody in Congress complains that the budget is too large and they can't possibly read the whole thing. Everything the fed gov does has a budget line that appears somewhere in that budget, but they don't read it all, if the budget of the government is too large for them to read all of then the actions of the government are too large for them to know them all, and if they don't know what the government is doing then they can't know how the government works. And if the guys that are supposedly in charge don't know how the government works then you and I certainly don't have a clue.