[fuqua]

Basically everything beyond Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid is discretionary spending. If you get rid of those, then yes, military spending looks huge as a share of discretionary spending.

There are dozens of sites breaking down the spending (this is just another attempt at visualizing the data). A quick search led me to http://nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-1... where you can find discretionary spending separated out on its own.

[wovenpixel]

Well, if you mean [some people] get together and figure out what to do spend money on and call it "the budget." Yes, I guess so.

But I mean, my understanding is that there is un-allotted money the government is willing to spend, beyond whatever budget they approve. My understanding was that, in particular, the military budget increases dramatically under these mechanisms.

Also - Social Security should also be separate, really, it's a trust fund with a very specific money - if we turned Social Security off tomorrow, it isn't like the money collected could go elsewhere. Money collected into that fund & being spent into that fund should not be able to be reallocated elsewhere.