Where the Money Goes · the receipts, then you judge

Is it that we can't afford to help — or that we choose not to?

The wings next door (bills, medical, property tax, transport) show people scrambling for small sums. So here's the fair question, answered with real numbers and real nuance: does the federal government have the money to take these problems off the table? Sourced facts; the conclusion is yours to draw.

Discretionary spending, FY2024 — what Congress chooses each year

Defense (military)~$842B

All non-defense~$758B

Of the ~$1.6 trillion in discretionary spending (the part Congress sets annually), the military is the single biggest slice — about 52%. Counting the way OMB does, national defense ran ~$874B in FY2024 — roughly 13% of all federal spending. (Veterans' benefits added ~$326B more.)

Sources: CBO — Discretionary Spending in FY2024 · Peterson Foundation — National Defense.

Now the scale of the "small sums"

🔥 Heating help (LIHEAP), nationwide

The federal program that keeps the lights and heat on for low-income households — the one behind the bills wing — runs on the order of a few billion dollars a year for the whole country. Against ~$874B in defense, that's a rounding error. The need is small in budget terms; the relief is enormous in human terms.

🧮 The honest math

One year of military spending could fund a program like LIHEAP many, many times over. So when someone can't cover a $200 heat bill, the bottleneck isn't that the country is broke — it's where the money is pointed. That's the curator's read: we can afford it; we choose our priorities.

The nuance — because no lying

⚖️ Mandatory dwarfs all of it

Most federal money isn't discretionary at all. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are mandatory spending and together far exceed the military — they're the real giants of the budget, and they already are the safety net for tens of millions. The military is the biggest discretionary choice, not the biggest line overall.

🛡️ Defense isn't nothing

Reasonable people argue defense spending buys real security, jobs, and alliances — and that you can't just zero it out. Fair. The point here isn't "abolish the military"; it's scale: the sums that would erase everyday hardship are tiny beside what we already spend by choice. What we fund is a values statement, and values are debatable — openly.

Verify it all yourself: CBO · USAspending.gov · National Priorities Project.

What this page claims, and doesn't. It claims, with citations, that the cost of solving the small everyday emergencies in these wings is tiny next to what the U.S. already spends each year — so "we can't afford it" is mostly false; it's a priorities question. It does not claim there's a free lunch, that defense is worthless, or that any single cut is painless. Per the one rule: real numbers, cited; the values judgment is yours. Solve for n = 1 — one person helped — and ask why that's the part we say we can't afford.