2012 federal budget: Discretionary spending

This chart appears to show how federal revenues from income tax are spent. The DoD, Homeland Security and Veteran Affairs budgets are combined to give a more accurate cost of US "defense."

Starting in the Vietnam war, the government combined both FICA payroll tax revenues with federal income tax revenues which made defense obligations look smaller  and entitlement programs (Social Security/Medicare) look bigger. 

Of course, income tax revenues are discretionary while entitlement revenues are usually not.

There is one exception, The government has been using FICA over payments to fund discretionary programs like defense.

These FICA over payments  are issued as IOUs that have to be paid back to the federal trust funds for Social Security and Medicare.

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