The federal government spends something like 10 times as much on defense as direct educational expenditures and it's still significantly more than education if you include things like loan financing in education.
I mean, OK, but that's only because the second part of your comparison isn't a federal government responsibility and there are only certain targeted initiatives (mostly pork-barrel) that fall into that category. Same for federal spending on education.
But when you look at all government spending on education, it's very clear that we spend more on education (5% of GDP, not counting loan guarantees) than on defense (3.7% of GDP). Except education is funded by local government whereas defense is funded by the federal government.
It's just not true that the federal government spends more on education than defense, in fact it's very lopsided in the other direction.
The context is a thread on the federal income tax specifically, and someone said the federal govt used to be not very technologically ambitious, and someone else says, essentially, it still isn't technologically ambitious, it spends most of its money on education and social welfare. OP corrected that. The social welfare part has some validity but federal education spending is quite minor.
Yes the total spending by all govts in the US including state + local has a lot more education spending but the thread and the whole article are focused on federal taxes.
As I think about more though, I must wonder if this could be a regional thing and varies.. and or if that is relevant to the specifics in this thread.
The more I think about it, I wonder if places like Cali and NY would think of things in that manner.. with places like Texas and TN thinking very differently.
It's an interesting thought, and wonder if there is data / polls out there for something seemingly basic like this.
Anyway, regardless of your personal definition of the term, the intent of communication of the person you are replying to is crystal clear and in obvious contradiction to your analysis. (That person expressly uses the word “federal.”)