2020 US defense spending $0.636B or 16%.
That’s the lion’s share?
mrep, you're either misinforming me, or you're misinformed. That 3.2% that you named doesn't cover domestic military spending (Homeland Security, FBI, NSA) nor does it cover pensions for widows and retirees, nuclear weapons research, nuclear waste disposal, nuclear weapon manufacturing, interest on war debts, the VA. Factoring in these costs actually puts military spending second on your list: 993.8 Billion Dollars, just 7 billion shy of the trillion we spent on social security. We now have a growing number of "civilians" in the military too; these private contractors help to make military spending look smaller than it really is.
And keep in mind the military budget has only grown since 9/11 never shrinking. We're still blowing up Yemen, Somalia, the Levant and Afghanistan as I type this, after already blowing up Iraq, Libya and Pakistan over a period of 20 years. It's expensive.
I can't wait to hear from "conservatives" who "care deeply" about deficits to come out of the wood works and teach us the virtue of "not spending money we don't have" now that we have given our tax breaks (again) to all the corporations from Amazon to Walmart.
Nobody gets to whine about deficits until we raise our tax rates up and stable for at least a decade[0]. I don't see anyone campaigning for higher property taxes (my recommendation is an annual tax of 7 to 9 percent[1] of the property value with a housing allowance to all residents physically present in the US) similar to the carbon tax in Canada.
[0] My off-hand recommendation for income above 50 x 2000 x minimum wage (for example, at a minimum wage of USD 15, it is USD 50 * 2000 * 15 = USD 1.5M), the progressive tax rate should be at least 90%.
[1] The idea being not paying this tax for roughly ten years ought to be enough to get you evicted with minimum fuss so we can "sell" the property to someone who will pay the property tax. No exceptions. No homesteads. No charitable work exception. Applicable nationwide.
At this point I can't tell if the politicians fund the DOD because they want to, or because they're afraid of the lengths it might go to protect its cashflow.