Federal Budget is spent overwhelmingly on military defense

So why all the complaints about spending too much on education, welfare, etc?
See PIE CHARTS:

And even with all this huge budget spending, Bush never caught Bin-Laden. How extremely wasteful.

Also see:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_budget_2010_3.html

And why should the rest of us be forced to pay for the pensions of government employees?
Why all the complaints about Social Security and Medicare? These entitlement programs have been paid for IN ADVANCE out of a separate fund that has nothing at all to do with national deficit.

National deficit must have obviously been created by overspending on military.
See how US Defense spending is so much more than rest of world:
http://zim.typepad.com/main/2010/02/global-distribution-of-military-spending-in-2008.html

PB

It is also a crystal clear sign of the decline of our empire. The American dream is now a nightmare.

Cheers!

while true of discretionary spending, it is not true of the total spending of the federal government.

in 2005 (the year the chart represents) total spending was $2,399bbn while the military portion of that was $556bbn or a little over 23%. and of that $556bbn over $100bbn was spent on Veterans Affairs and for some reason foreign economic aid is included there as well.

in 2010 total spending was $3,591bbn and the military portion was $871bbn (in this case about 24%).

in 2014 total spending projects $4,016bbn vs $842bbn(21%).

while the numbers for military spending are outrageous, in the context of the overall federal budget (which you reference in the title of your OP) they are not the overwhelming majority.

sP

Total federal spending includes entitlements such as social security and medicare.
However, if you examine your pay check, FICA and Medicare are separate from the general federal income taxes so, I understand, are supposed to be kept separate from the general budget.

i do get your point...and it's painfully sharp.

sP

One this does not include mandated (nondiscretionary spending).

Also I see in the Constitution a role for the Federal government for Defense. I can't say the same for many of the other items of spending. They all come under the General Welfare clause.

That being said we spend too much on Defense (4.7% versus about 2.5% for our major allies). We need to get our spending down to 2.5% of GDP for Defense like our allies. We missed a golden opportunity to pull out of Europe when the Soviet Union went down, and we should have been working ourselves out of S. Korea and Japan all along.

I would also make the case that Federal involvement in Education spending has been a net negative.

Normalize the figures for different levels of benefits, both during active duty and after duty ends. Then there might be something to talk about.

Also keep in mind that in the US a lot of non-military stuff is wedged into the military budget: Veteran's benefits for surviving spouses, for instance. The composite numbers commonly cited try to *maximize* the military's budget, even if it's not always strictly military. If it's touched by or touches anything military, it's military. (GI Bill scholarships, for instance, are neo-imperialist defense spending.) Similarly, in other countries military stuff is wedged into non-military budgets, and that often minimizes their military budgets.

The only country I knew really well was the USSR: If the military needed some motors, it got them, at the going rate--whatever the company had to do to make them up to military standards, however much it cost. The US paid through the nose for stuff made to military standards. The USSR had the civilian sector subsidize, tacitly, the military. Similarly, a soldier got barracks and board (no family housing, except for officers); something like $20/month, and no benefits after leaving the required service. In the US soldiers got a few hundred dollars a month, family housing, and benefits. Since personnel and materiel make up the majority of the budget, the Soviet Union's military budget--even if you tried to take into account monies for top secret programs--couldn't be compared with the US' military budget. Late in the USSR's run it was even worse: the conscripts were often supposed to come up with some of their own equipment and relied on care packages for their rations.

China's probably similar to the USSR in the early 1980s in most respects, merging military and civilian, having low-paid draftees. Even the UK and France don't need to have all the VA benefits; they also rely heavily on the "commons".

Excluding entitlement spending, as if that money is not spent, is deceptive.

*if we exclude spending that does not got to big businesses.

If you include entitlements such as social security and medicare, defense is not that much.
HOwever, they are paid for in advance and I understand should be part of a separate budget.

A portion has been paid for in advance, and borrowed/spent. A lot of the people who "paid in advance" didn't get any additional benefit from it--they just paid extra to make sure there was a surplus for the decades when the funds would run a deficit.

At no time has a majority of the FICA/Medicare tax gone for anything other than benefits to beneficiaries, and the days of those taxes exceeding expenses are probably over for a long, long time.

That's how it works now. Every cent paid in goes back out the door in benefits. Nobody is currently "paying in advance."

that's stuff we could cut.

In reality social spending and interest on the debt makes up about half.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png

They are supposed to be separate budgets.
Entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare are taken out of our paychecks as FICA and medicare to pay ONLY for Social Security and Medicare.