[treis]

There's something funky going on with that chart. Military spending is about 20% of the budget when you include Veterans benefits. You're right that it's smaller than the ~50% spent on SS and Meciare/Medicaid, but after those it's by far the biggest budget item.

[justin66]

We did not go from 700 billion to 50 billion spent on the military from 2017 to 2018, so yes, that chart (and the associated data) is bullshit.

There are a ton of technicalities involved in government budgeting and accounting though. It's just not a chart you'd want to share to make an honest point in a conversation like this.