Americans spent about 50 days working and paying taxes last year just to feed the war machine — with 23 days going to pay Pentagon contractors and their millionaire CEOs, Lindsay Koshgarian and Hanna Homestead report.
Sailors staging ordnance on USS Abraham Lincoln for the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, Feb. 28. (US Navy)
By Lindsay Koshgarian and Hanna Homestead
Common Dreams
Well it’s April 15 — tax day in the U.S. Do you know where your tax dollars actually go?
As federal budgeting experts, we get asked about this a lot — often, it’s something people simply have no idea about.
But if you’ve watched the Trump administration launch one war after another, flood the streets of American cities with Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents, and call the very idea of an affordability crisis a “hoax” by their political opponents, you might be getting the general idea.
Around half of Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities. But last year, instead of investing in programs that help people make ends meet, the president and his friends in Congress passed a Big Ugly Bill that cut taxes for the wealthy, slashed health insurance and food assistance for millions of Americans, and added billions in new spending for war and mass deportations.
Some of those changes, such as the deepest cuts to health insurance, won’t take effect until 2026 or later. Others are taking effect now and are visible in the war on Iran and the deployment of mass deportation forces in our cities.
These enormous sums for the Pentagon and militarism more broadly — now well over $1 trillion —come with enormous costs to ordinary people. That’s true not just in terms of the opportunity cost for other programs, but also for the drain on Americans’ wallets.
In a new report for the Institute for Policy Studies, we broke down last year’s typical tax bill and what each household actually spent, on average, for different programs and priorities in 2025.
We learned, for example, that the average U.S. taxpayer paid $4,049 for weapons and war last year — a huge sum in a time of rising costs of living and stagnant wages. That’s far, far more than any other program funded by income tax dollars.
Healthcare protest, Illinois, 2018. (Charles Edward Miller, CC-BY-ASA-2.0, Wikimedia)
Medicaid, the next highest item on our income tax receipt, ran a little under $2,500 — and that funds healthcare for 1 in 5 Americans. School lunches and other nutrition programs, by comparison, ran just $124. The Postal Service? $19. (Big programs like Social Security and Medicare have their own dedicated funding streams, and aren’t as significant for your income taxes.)
More than half of the Pentagon’s sum went to private, for-profit military contractors — the top CEOs of which now make over $25 million a year on average. Put another way, you spent about 50 days working and paying taxes last year just to feed the war machine — and 23 days working to pay those Pentagon contractors and their millionaire CEOs.
The war in Iran hadn’t started yet when you were paying taxes last year. But if we use last year’s tax data and set the cost for the war at $35 billion — a line we’re likely on the verge of crossing — the average taxpayer will have paid $130 for the war on Iran. And that becomes a double whammy when you count the many hundreds more at the gas pump, grocery store, or on other expenses made worse because of the conflict.
Polls show that Americans don’t want this war that’s causing so many deaths in Iran and elsewhere at the same time people here in the U.S. are left to struggle. Unfortunately, nobody in this administration asked us.
Meanwhile, programs that actually help people trying to make ends meet — a growing population, unfortunately — are getting cut. As more of those cuts take effect — especially to Medicaid — the gap between what we spend on the Pentagon and everything else will only keep growing.
Worse still, Trump and his allies are planning a repeat of last year’s Big Ugly Bill. The president has requested $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon next year — a huge increase from the $1 trillion budget this year. That would make the numbers all the more lopsided.
Nobody loves paying taxes, but we all agree we should get our money’s worth. And in a democracy, hard-earned tax dollars should go toward programs that actually keep people safe and healthy.
Before plowing more money into the war machine, we need to take a long, hard look at how policymakers are using taxpayers’ money. Americans want a government that supports them when times are tough — not one that shakes them down for endless wars.
CORRECTION: Headline was corrected to average voter instead of each voter.
Lindsay Koshgarian directs the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Hanna Homestead is a research analyst for the National Priorities Project.
This article is from Common Dreams.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
all government spending where that govt is sovereign is funded by public money,in USs case created as it is spent by Congress,
so the entire article is founded on monetary myth ;this is obviously different within US states,as it is in EU member countries;tax is important but serves entirely different purposes.
None of this should be understood as approving in any way of the kinds of spending to which the article refers
using public money.Also important to understand ,it isnt debt but rather the cumulative spending across decades by the Govt
into non Govt activities ( which again is not approved here) so is in fact an investment treasure owned usually in treasuries so the US Govt can never run out of money nor go bankrupt but can suffer raging inflation from shortages of things to buy -important to understand because those making huge profits from especially military spending seek to make you believe such and such a social improvement is not ” affordable” so voters agree they cant have it like free healthcare where Sanders balked not daring to annouce economic truths despite his advisor.Nor has this anything to do with robbing Peter to pay Paul as many seek to display it…and the causes of inflation are often complex and cannot ever be reasonably placed in one box
“… we need to take a long, hard look at how policymakers are using taxpayers’ money.”
What’s a bet that the majority of those who contribute to taxation revenue are those who can least afford to.
The casually employed, the low and minimum wage earners who are literally unable to afford accountants to minimise their tax contributions.
Unlike, the CEOs who probably pay zero or bugger-all tax. And are the usual beneficiaries of tax cuts.
The illegal wars, and the environment-destroying military, are propped up by the working classes, not just via the taxation system but also courtesy of those enlisted who couldn’t find employment elsewhere in capitalist America.
Exactly! Its stunning to read this kind of stuff. Our “tax dollars” dont fund the Federal government.
“Taxation revenue.” No, the Federal government does not need “taxpayers” to “contribute” to it so it can then fund, say, Medicare or Israeli bombs. We are citizens first, or the Public, and taxpayers a distant last. The chief reason for taxing the rich is to keep them from becoming rich, a distinctly social function that has little to do with economics. There are many pernicious things Americans are led to believe, and the idea that the Federal Govenment is an empty purse that needs to be filled with “taxpayer money” is one of the worst.
This is turbo capitalism, better called fascism.
Not stopped, there will be no good end.