The total budget is $7.2 trillion, “defense” spending is $850 billion (the summary’s on page 136). Unless I’m missing something both of the numbers in the meme appear to be just made up. Here’s an infographic that’s a couple years out of date but a lot easier to make sense of.
The US spends an absolutely insane amount on its military, but it also spends an insane amount on lots of other stuff. The really obscene thing that’s making it hard to fund needed programs is (1) corrupt congresspeople simply deciding not to fund them and (2) simply not taxing people who are making millions or billions of dollars (see also #1).
The US budget actually reserves the largest amount for social security and medicare, which actually makes sense, those are the two figures that you pay specific additional taxes for
What the shit is this
The total budget is $7.2 trillion, “defense” spending is $850 billion (the summary’s on page 136). Unless I’m missing something both of the numbers in the meme appear to be just made up. Here’s an infographic that’s a couple years out of date but a lot easier to make sense of.
The US spends an absolutely insane amount on its military, but it also spends an insane amount on lots of other stuff. The really obscene thing that’s making it hard to fund needed programs is (1) corrupt congresspeople simply deciding not to fund them and (2) simply not taxing people who are making millions or billions of dollars (see also #1).
The US budget actually reserves the largest amount for social security and medicare, which actually makes sense, those are the two figures that you pay specific additional taxes for