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by rumanator 2241 days ago
> America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you

Do you have a source that supports your statement?

5 comments

This isn't just by a small margin. Both Social Security and Health and Human Services are close to twice the amount spent on defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

The raw data can be gathered from congress.gov, but here's a summary graphic for 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...

It depends on your definitions of entitlements and military, but for example, social security spending was at $1.0 trillion compared to $676 billion for defense.

Notice that veterans affairs and a lot of the DOE is filed under 'not military'.
To be fair, some of the US's defense spending sounds like a way to covertly fund "socialist" programs in a way that's politically tolerable. For example, a bunch of weapons programs appear to be driven by the need to artificially create jobs in some precise locations.
It's common knowledge. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone account for more than half of the total federal budget (before covid)

Progressives will tell you that these are expensive programs. Progressive wants to significantly cut the military, and replace medicare/medicaid with a single-payer universal system which would be far cheaper. They also want higher taxes to help fund these programs and redistribute wealth from the wealthy to the poor.

Medicare is hardly a wealth redistribution scheme. Everybody needs healthcare.

While a fully organized single payer health system is obviously a massive expense, it is still the more financially moderate option compared to what we have today.