When an angry MAGA Republican screams in the comments, “I have to pay taxes just to see it squandered on the homeless, drug addicts, and education programs that don’t work!”
Assuming you’re not a troll-bot, I ask you to look at the numbers. The federal FY2025 budget is about $7 trillion. More than a trillion dollars goes just to interest on the national debt. We can argue about defense spending, tax breaks, corporate subsidies, and all the big-ticket items another time. Let’s look at the numbers you’re interested in:
Federal spending on education is about half a percent of the budget, and federal homelessness assistance is around five-hundredths of one percent (0.05%). Combined, that’s roughly 55 cents out of every $100 in federal spending.
If you’re angry about taxes, at least aim at the part of the budget that actually exists at scale. You can argue about whether programs work, but blaming your tax bill on homeless people and schools is scapegoating, not budgeting.
Memoirs of an Earthling 
Thanks for the post on the angry MAGA taxpayers: Ever so true!
The naysayers have always focused on the hot-button items that keep us folks-on-the-ground agitated and divided among ourselves so we don’t go after the true culprits stealing all our taxpayer dollars.
Someone way more famous than me has said (and the quote has been attributed to others): “Everybody does better when everybody does better.”
When only the 1% wealthy few who get the truly monstrous taxpayer dole-outs (military, pharma, chemical-ag, tech, etc.) and do the most damage are never called out by these MAGA folks and those on the far rims of either political spectrum, that’s how we get the mess we’ve got.
Thanks for the great perspective.
Thank you. That is exactly the larger point I was trying to make. We are encouraged to fight over highly visible programs that make up tiny portions of the budget, while the genuinely enormous expenditures receive far less scrutiny.
“Everybody does better when everybody does better” is a good principle to bring to the discussion. We should certainly debate whether public programs are effective, but that debate ought to begin with accurate numbers rather than resentment directed at the people with the least power.