4 ms·

Half is incorrect. It's about 20%. Still a large amount. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_

• jbooth 14y ago
  Over half of the discretionary budget, which is the pot of money that things like food stamps come out of (way less than 1%, if anyone's counting). The entitlement programs are run off of their own separate taxes and are legally "off-budget" compared to discretionary spending. Their budget isn't voted on, it's basically "automatic", coming from the legislation that created them. Same with debt repayment (which, coincidentally, represents defense spending in previous years, neat that it doesn't count that way on your pie chart though). So that's where he's getting his ideas from. The federal budget that gets voted on by congress every year (in a good year) is over 50% defense, and more like 65% defense if you include Homeland Security, Dept of State, Veteran Affairs, etc in the defense column instead of domestic. Here's a more useful graphic: http://www.deathandtaxesposter.com/ http://www.deathandtaxesposter.com/