~16%: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

It's far lower than that. There's a fake pie chart floating around the internet showing Defense at 57% of the federal budget. For 2019, the real number was 12%. In previous years it was about 15%.

It depends on how you categorize things. The 50% numbers come from discretionary budgets & are accurate. But ‘most’ federal spending is not discretionary. It’s old people care.

There really isn't any non-discretionary spending. The closest we have is payments specified in international treaties, and even that can simply not be paid. All the rest is just a couple congressional votes and a presidential signature away from being eliminated.

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are considered mandatory spending because politicians tend to like being reelected.

That and it doesn’t go through the standard appropriations process.

Discretionary spending is about 1/3 of the budget, and, yeah, defense is half of that, but when the GP wrote that "military spending takes up more than half of the budget" it paints a misleading picture.

Nope. It takes up about a third of the budget and is itself in large part a social program.

a "social" program for defense contractors. I m sure they are hurting, and need to make more money.

A social program for able bodied men and women willing to work for a living. It's how my father escaped poverty.

A social program would be building schools, bridges, improving access to education, funding research for medicines to be put in public domain so it’s affordable. Adding a 12th aircraft carrier or developing an unnecessary fighter plane is not a social program.

Not everyone joins the military because the alternative is absolute shit, but it often is, and they often do. It is absolutely a social program in that sense, and if you cut it, your other social programs are going to have to take up the slack. You have to de-rate the "win" from cutting it accordingly.