<That large federal budget is mostly debt service payments (thank you Ronald Reagan), Social Security (bi-partisan dictatorship of the elderly in a Ponzi scheme), and defense (mostly Republicans' fault, especially nuclear and conventional capabilities that have nothing to do with modern defense needs). Apportion the blame accordingly.

Actual numbers from the 2003 budget documents of a few months ago (don't know what the numbers are now, since they keep changing them). All numbers in billions.

Discretionary:

Defense ......................................368
Non-defense ................................405
Subtotal, discretionary ...................773

Emergency Response Fund.................16

Mandatory: [entitlements]

Social Security...............................472
Medicare.......................................231
Medicaid .......................................159
Other mandatory ............................297

Subtotal, mandatory .....................1,159

Net interest ...................................181

Total Outlays................................2,128

This parcels out to:

Defense: 17 percent

Payments to the elderly and other SS recipients: 41 percent*

Net interest: 9 percent

Everything else, including NASA and every other government program seems to fall under non-defense discretionary, at about 19 percent.

Needless to say, this doesn't quite fit the standard mythology.

*I don't know exactly where "other mandatory" goes, so I excluded that from the percentage.