Sorry, it's actually less, only . Mandated benefits is .
The federal budget is normally broken into three sections:
- Servicing the national debt: Paying interest on loans. This costs or of the overall federal budget.
- Mandatory spending: Some spending is required by existing laws no matter what. Congress is required to procure funds for these costs (things like social welfare and medicare) and can only avoid it by repealing or amending the laws which require them to do so. This would require a 60% majority in the senate, which is impossible. Even if the republicans gained that much the RINOs would nerf any attempt to cut mandatory spending.
- Discretionary spending: This is the only portion of the budget congress has any kind of real control over, even then the senate can rewrite any decisions they make and the president can refuse to sign their budget.
Some sources will place military spending higher by using one or more of the following tricks:
- They'll only consider discretionary spending, and ignore the other two.
- They'll expand the military budget to include things like homeland security and veteran benefits
- They'll use some buzzword like "militarised budget" so they can include even more like federal incarceration, law enforcement etc.
Check out pretty much any western country and you'll see the same trend: Roughly 2/3rds of their budget will be spending on welfare programs of various kinds, and that portion of the budget is rarely if ever cut. I'd argue that portion is actually larger since many other spending programs effectively operate as welfare programs, like hiring woke minorities to lecture government employees about how they're evil and racist.
Sorry, it's actually less, only [15%](https://www.visitmilitarybases.com/interesting/what-percent-of-federal-budget-is-military.html). Mandated benefits is [60%](https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305789).
The federal budget is normally broken into three sections:
* **Servicing the national debt**: Paying interest on loans. This costs [$523 Bn per annum](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4258513-cost-of-servicing-u-s-federal-debt) or [8.7%](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/24/facts-about-the-national-debt/) of the overall federal budget.
* **Mandatory spending**: Some spending is required by existing laws no matter what. Congress is required to procure funds for these costs (things like social welfare and medicare) and can only avoid it by repealing or amending the laws which require them to do so. This would require a 60% majority in the senate, which is impossible. Even if the republicans gained that much the RINOs would nerf any attempt to cut mandatory spending.
* **Discretionary spending**: This is the only portion of the budget congress has any kind of real control over, even then the senate can rewrite any decisions they make and the president can refuse to sign their budget.
Some sources will place military spending higher by using one or more of the following tricks:
* They'll only consider discretionary spending, and ignore the other two.
* They'll expand the military budget to include things like homeland security and veteran benefits
* They'll use some buzzword like "militarised budget" so they can include even more like federal incarceration, law enforcement etc.
Check out pretty much any western country and you'll see the same trend: Roughly 2/3rds of their budget will be spending on welfare programs of various kinds, and that portion of the budget is rarely if ever cut. I'd argue that portion is actually larger since many other spending programs effectively operate as welfare programs, like hiring woke minorities to lecture government employees about how they're evil and racist.
(post is archived)