No matter how you cut, a very large portion of taxes paid goes towards healthcare. 30% for social security, 30% minimum for healthcare. Military and interest costs therefore are clearly not the bigger portions of spending.
> The government expects to spend $4.829 trillion in 2021.1 Almost 60% of that pays for mandated benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
> Social Security will be the biggest expense, budgeted at $1.151 trillion. It's followed by Medicare at $722 billion and Medicaid at $448 billion.
Overall I agree, but I am pointing out how numbers are framed is really important. For example this puts Defense spending at 1T and heathcare at 1.7T, while leaving out several categories of both. https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2020USbn_...
I am not saying any specific number is correct, but that 1T figure excludes military pensions and heath care excludes related research spending. Neither includes any debt payments from past spending or projections of future obligations. In the end it is actually possible to construct a number for each where federal defense spending is greater than federal healthcare spending, but again I don’t agree with such categorizations.
PS: This gets back to the oldest trick in “cutting“ spending, define a portion as something else. Similarly, define a category of taxes as “income taxes“ so you can exclude payroll taxes when talking about them.
https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305...
> The government expects to spend $4.829 trillion in 2021.1 Almost 60% of that pays for mandated benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
> Social Security will be the biggest expense, budgeted at $1.151 trillion. It's followed by Medicare at $722 billion and Medicaid at $448 billion.