[zamfi]

I mean, yes? Do you believe that if there was no voting that the money would get spent in better ways?

40% is a lot, but also the vast majority of federal spending goes to the safety net: unemployment insurance, social security, Medicare, health services — these categories are each more than spending on defense.

Personally, though I’ve never had to rely on unemployment insurance, I’m definitely glad it exists!

The political arguments about spending are basically noise at the margins by comparison.

[thorwasdfasdf]

Defenese spending is much more than you think: it's not just the "defense" category, it's also department of energy, dept of veteran affairs, dept of homeland security, and there's other sections where defense spending comes from. All together it's a sizable chunk.

Social security (20%), medicare and medicaide (20%). unemployment is a very small part as far as i know.

[TheCoelacanth]

Your numbers are technically correct since you only gave one significant figure, but you're still rounding off more than $300 billion and also forgetting to count almost $400 billion in smaller programs.

Out of $4.4 trillion:

Social security - $1 trillion - 23%

Medicare - $644 billion - 15%

Medicaid - $409 billion - 9%

SNAP, EITC, Unemployment, SSI and other Income Security Programs - $303 billion mandatory spending + $73 billion - 8%

That's about 55% of the total on various parts of the safety net.

[1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324