We Spend a Lot More on Welfare Than Bombs. That’s a Problem.
10th September 2026
The other day, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told Qatari state media that the United States was “spending tens of billions of dollars on killing people” when that money “could have been used to make life easier” for the public. “There always seems to be money for war,” he went on, “but not to feed the poor.”
The United States, in reality, spends immense amounts of money feeding and taking care of the poor—far more than it does on war.
Yet, if you listened to the Left, you’d think military spending was driving the debt and squeezing the poor. National defense comprises around 13% of the federal budget, far less than the primary drivers of debt, Social Security and Medicare.
We spend less on the military than we do paying down the interest on our immense $40 trillion national debt.
A debt that exists predominantly because Democorats never met a dollar that they didn’t want to spend (on something that would buy them votes).