Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020
Does defense spending consume half the federal government’s discretionary budget?
Defense spending accounts for about half of discretionary spending by the U.S. government. Other discretionary spending includes expenditures on education, public health, infrastructure, scientific research and energy. In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2019, total discretionary spending of $1.3 trillion was 30% of the total budget of $4.4 trillion.
In the current fiscal year, defense spending is more than half of requested discretionary spending.
Non-discretionary (mandatory) spending must be funded by Congress under federal law. It includes programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment insurance.
Discretionary spending is determined by Congress each year. In 2019, at 3.1% of national output, it reached the lowest level since 1962. Spending to offset the impact of the coronavirus pandemic is likely to reverse the downward trend over the next few years.
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.
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