Taxes in the US go to a cluster of major items. Medicare, other medical, Social Security, interest, VA benefits and veteran's medical care, federal spending on the indigent or disabled, and Defense. Those together are 94% of annual federal spending.

None of that spending is subject to that much debate; all the remaining "debate" is over the remaining 6%.

I don't think defense is really as discretionary as it seems. A lot of it is effectively bribing and menacing trading partners to keep trading with the US on favorable terms through cash transfers, provision of military equipment, training, and mutual defense pacts among other diplomatic agreements.

Japan didn't just decide on its own free will to become a pacifist country dedicated to exporting cheap, high-quality manufactured goods to the United States. General MacArthur did that.

And let's not forget: the voters back them on this.

And yet so much of the spending goes to big ticket items benefitting defense contractors while things that actually benefit the soldiers (better armor, better VA hospitals) go by the wayside.

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