The largest buckets non defense buckets are social security (1.4 trillion), medicare+medicaid (~1.6 trillion), interest payments (~800 billion). Total DOD spending is like ~750 billion, and DHS is like ~100 billion. FY2023 deficit was roughly 1.7 trillion dollars
Social security and medicare together at like ~2.4 trillion dollars a year, and are supporting a population of roughly 55 million Americans (just grossly taking the 65+ age population). This works out to roughly 43k per year per 65+ adult. You can decide for yourself is this seems like the right way for the government to work.
Anyhow, I am certain there is a lot of waste, and a lot of different types of waste there.
But fundamentally, the US government is trying to do a lot of frankly difficult and gigantic tasks. The DoD is tasked with amongst other things, perpetuating American hegemony, which right now is kinda critical for the entire US government funding situation. The USG's ability to leverage USD status as the world's reserve currency to help fund expenditures is contingent on it being if not THE global hegemon, then at least amongst the world's top powers, and the hegemon (or uh... senior security partner) for a substantial fraction of the world's economy.
New City Herald
Rioters set fire to the entire city after the Mayor's new budget accidentally starved roughly 8.6 million disabled people and 6 million survivors of deceased retirees.
Try File -> New City to start over.
Wait, so they had wills for their kids and the government just... took that money? How does that work, or am I way off base?
For example the navy exists as "force projection" - not coastal protection. Force protection is a foreign policy goal, not a "defense" goal.
The US military is not designed to fight on the US mainland, it's designed to fight on someone else's mainland.
Equally the medicaid budget could be way less. Other countries manage with less (for their entire population) but they dictate pricing, whereas in the US the suppliers dictate pricing. And they expect healthy profit margins at every point.
In general, the govt spends so much because the people charge so much. The govt has enormous negotiating muscle, but dares not flex it least they incur the wrath of "the free market".
Every other nation spends less because they are not the global hegemon. USD is in the position it is because we are the global hegemon. If you remove that by spending less on defense, USD strength goes down and our budget deficit and outstanding government debt start going up, weakening the country.
This idea that military spending is not a large chunk of the budget is only when one has a very, very narrow definition of military spending.
Everything else is a lot smaller and a lot simpler.
Most of the money public k-12 schools get from municipal property taxes, and most of the public funding that state universities receive comes from the state level.
yes, during a mini-recession IIRC. we're around that point.
>Education is funded by the states.
and federal funding.
I tried searching and it looks like social security is the biggest expense of the budget. Medicare is larger than defense, excluding other health stuff like Medicaid and public health spending, which separately also add up to more than defense. That said I agree defense spending is out of control and inefficient, probably due to big contractors who have been robbing taxpayers for decades.
If Trump gets the tax cuts he talked about before the election that moves up the exhaustion of the trust fund by 1-3 years depending on whose projections you use.
There are two approaches that can reasonably get Congressional support.
1. Raise the retirement age to 69 or 70 (from the current 67). You could still retire as early as 62 just like now, but when you retire early your benefit is less than your full benefit amount.
Most projections I've seen have that adding a few years to the life of the trust fund.
2. Raise the cap on the payroll tax. The payroll tax is a flat rate tax on payroll (half paid by the employee and half by the employer) on the first $168k of you annual pay.
Raising that cap to something like $400k would extend the life of the trust fund something like 70 years.
From what I've read both Democrat and Republican voters strongly favor approach #2.
In Congress Democrats favor #2 and Republicans favor #1.
We probably should do both. One of the Republican arguments for #1 is that people live longer now, so it makes sense to raise the retirement age. But #1 is only a relatively short term fix for the trust fund.
#2 is long term. In particular #2 fixes it long enough to get well past dealing with the situation we are in now where people born at the peak of the baby boom are retiring. We are seeing around 11k people a day turning 65. It's expected to remain in that ballpark through 2027. With #1 the trust fund should be good long past the time all those people have died.
So do #2 to deal with the trust fund. Do #1 to address longer lifespans (if we decide that your longer life should mean more working years rather than more retirement years).
Because ultimately politics is about getting votes. And there simply aren't any votes in making the US government more efficient or balancing the budget.
I hear this and wonder how The New Deal ever managed to get off the proposal floor. Real shame how underinformed the voting populace is.