I hate to interrupt a good antisocialism rant, but defense takes up 20% of federal spending, tied with Social Security as the costliest single program.
I hate to interrupt a good antisocialism rant, but defense takes up 20% of federal spending, tied with Social Security as the costliest single program.
Check again Medicare and Medicaid are by far the costliest entitlement.Defense and social security overruns together do not add up to the massive annual 900 billion dollar medicare/medicaid hole. Defense is not a redistributive entitlement payable to individuals.SS and medicaid are. Apples and oranges.
I hate to interrupt the interruption to the anti socialism rant...
My post was about social/entitlement spending’s portion of the income the Federal Government collects - not as a portion of the total spent (over $1.40 is spent for every dollar actually collected). And it is from the borrowed funds that defense and other actually Constitutional spending comes from (I say this only because the current government has put handouts in a category called “mandatory” spending. While putting Constitutionally mandated stuff in the “appropriated” category...
So-called “entitlement” spending exceeds gross tax revenues all by itself (and estimated $2.48 TRILLION in 2012 alone). Defense gets somewhere around $600 Billion.