Note: that all numbers are in the MILLIONS so that top line is $3.5 TRILLION.

President Trump’s budget is going to get some more attention with the Obamacare fight gone. He ran on the promise of rebuilding our military and people have significant pushback on that… but let’s look at the numbers.

This week I walked you through how you can download the ACTUAL budget numbers since the inception of the United States. We calculated the deficits and demonstrated that Republicans manage the purse-strings significantly better than Democrats.

Today, let’s dig deeper and dispel another myth around defense spending. The complaint lobbied at the Right is that we spend more on defense than any other item on our budget. Nope. And you can prove it to yourself.

First, you have to know where to look again so I’ll link directly to the table: Table 3.1 — Outlays by Superfunction and Function: 1940–2021

The Superfunction and Function indicate the top level budget categories that the government uses to allocate spending. It gets really granular in other tables so we’ll keep it at this level.

Let’s look at 2015 and just list out the main items as they come to us in the table (note: all numbers are in the MILLIONS):

National Defense: $589,564 (that’s $589 billion)

Human resources: $2,706,820 (that’s $2 trillion)

Physical resources: $115,170

Net interest: $223,181

Other functions: $ 169,360

Total, Federal outlays: $3,688,292

So in 2015 the government shows outlays of $3.6 Trillion. Before you get too awed as to that amount just consider that the national debt is close to $20 Trillion. Want to know what that looks like?

But I digress. Let’s answer the question: is defense spending the biggest line item in the budget?

Note that over 70% of the United States budget and spending goes to something called: “human resources.”

Included in this are all entitlement programs, some federal employment and benefits, social security, medicaid and other internal programs. Let’s break that down:

Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services:

$122,061

$122,061 Health: $482,223

Medicare: $546,202

Income Security: $508,843

Social Security: $887,753

Veterans Benefits and Services: $ 159,738

The largest line item is Social Security and it’s a deceptive number in that the outlays you see there are just that… outlays for that year. (The government also owes $2.7 Trillion back to Social Security at some point since they dipped in there to use the money to fund other programs).

So, we’ve already dispelled the myth that defense spending is the largest outlay but I think when most pundits and politicos bring up this talking point they are usually referring to the money we spend internally to help Americans vs. military spending to fight wars. (Let’s examine that and narrow the comparison down to budget items directed in year — rather than “owed” someone).

Let’s exclude Social Security which is “paid” for by citizens via payroll (paid in quotes there). Let’s exclude Medicare, the health program and payment insurance service for US citizens who are over 65 years old, which is promised to senior citizens by every politician since eternity. Let’s also exclude Veterans Benefits and Services since we definitely owe them that.

The category labelled “Health” is anything related to healthcare services that is NOT Medicare and is budgeted per year (and there are a LOT of those programs). Income Security is unemployment benefits and other “out-of-work” benefits people can apply for including food stamps and other programs helping means-tested folks.

So, to add it all up:

National Defense: $589,564

Health and Income Security: $991,066

There is not question here. Even excluding the entitlement line items “owed” us we still spend a good deal more on internal programs than national defense.