No, no, no. I'm using discretionary spending because that is the spending that, ideally, is entirely funded by Federal income taxes.

A discussion of entitlements funded by payroll taxes would be a different conversation entirely. Everybody with a job pays some payroll taxes, no matter how poor they are. These are also progressive to some extent, but the conversation would get far too complicated.

You picked the examples in your original response on things that are "free." Discretionary spending includes the military, Federal highway funds, NASA, and the Corps of Engineers. It includes the NIH, Federal parks, Dept. of Agriculture, Dept. of Education, Dept. of Transportation, FDA...well, there's a nice list here.

And yes, it includes all Federal welfare and housing programs that are not Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. But as you rightly point out, that's not the majority of discretionary spending. But then the majority of non-tax-payers aren't on welfare. They're just not rich.

Federal taxation is massive wealth redistribution. Period.

I thought I explained the relevance to the single-payer concept. It is a dead certainty that a large-scale Federal health care system would be no less distributive, with the wealthy carrying the vast majority of the load. No politician could sell anything else. The idiots want "free" health care, so all the politicians need to do is make sure a majority of voters get the free stuff, and far fewer get the shaft.

That it won't work matters little to statist politicians. This was never about health care. It's about power. And the people suffering under it will be told it would be far worse under a private system, or that it's never been better than this.

History is full of examples of political leaders living the high life, and wielding absolute power, while their people live in the crapper. Have you ever seen a single one of these leaders expressing the slightest concern that their people are eating tree bark while they dine on exotic dishes from around the world?