{"id":8320,"date":"2026-09-07T15:08:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T15:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8320"},"modified":"2026-09-07T15:08:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T15:08:30","slug":"mamdanis-hit-on-us-military-is-economic-idiocy-heres-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8320","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani’s hit on US military is economic idiocy \u2014 here’s the truth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The other day, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani told Qatari state media that the United States was \u201cspending tens of billions of dollars on killing people\u201d when that money \u201ccould have been used to make life easier\u201d for the public.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere always seems to be money for war,\u201d he went on, \u201cbut not to feed the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States, in reality, spends immense <\/em>amounts of money feeding and taking care of the poor \u2014 far more than it does on war.<\/p>\n

Yet if you listened to the left, you\u2019d think military spending was driving the debt and squeezing the poor.<\/p>\n

National defense comprises around 13% of the federal budget, far less than the primary drivers of debt, Social Security and Medicare.<\/p>\n

We spend less on the military than we do paying down the interest on our immense $40 trillion national debt.<\/p>\n

The federal government spends around $1.3 trillion each year on means-tested welfare and \u201canti-poverty\u201d programs.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s more than the national budget of Germany.<\/p>\n

There are somewhere in the vicinity of 80 individual federal programs providing aid to the poor.<\/p>\n

Over 36 million people in the United States receive food stamps, for instance \u2014 around 11% of the population.<\/p>\n

Around 100 million Americans receive some form of government assistance. Virtually none of them pay federal individual income tax.<\/p>\n

None of this accounts for local programs: Over 23% of an average state\u2019s expenditures go to welfare, which is not only more than they spend on public schools but far more than they spend on police, hospitals and roads combined.<\/p>\n

Then there are city government programs.<\/p>\n

In Mamdani\u2019s New York, a record $2.71 billion in direct welfare cash assistance payments were sent out in 2025, a 70% spike from 2022.<\/p>\n

New York City also spent $14.63 billion on social programs for the poor.<\/p>\n

It spends less than half that on the police.<\/p>\n

A crude back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that the average family in New York probably contributes more than $11,000 each year to government programs that help those living below the poverty line.<\/p>\n

Yet in the larger scheme of things, we spend little on \u201cbombs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a typical fiscal year, baseline spending on munitions is around $30 billion. (Because of the Iran war, that number has spiked to $76 billion.)<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2014 as a raw number, that\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n

And no one can credibly argue that the Pentagon has been a good steward when it comes to military spending.<\/p>\n

But in perspective, the $919 billion in federal and state funding of Medicaid last year was more than all the money we\u2019ve spent on munitions for over 15 years.<\/p>\n

The US GDP was over $30 trillion in 2025. Around 3% of it was spent on national defense.<\/p>\n

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Leftists love to point out that the United States devotes more money to its military than the next six countries combined.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true. Being a hyperpower doesn\u2019t come cheap.<\/p>\n

The US also spends more on welfare and entitlement programs \u2014 cars, tech, housing and virtually everything \u2014 than the next six countries combined.<\/p>\n

If you believe that the state isn\u2019t sufficiently assisting the poor, there are thousands of other ways to get involved.<\/p>\n

Around 70% of Americans reportedly give to charity each year, amounting to an estimated $617 billion in 2025 \u2014 more than the next six countries combined.<\/p>\n

Of course, no amount will ever be enough for people who believe all economic activity should be siphoned into state agencies for proper redistribution.<\/p>\n

Nor will it be enough for people who believe funding is the only way to mitigate poverty.<\/p>\n

The broader debate, virtually impossible to broach these days, is whether endlessly increasing welfare actually helps in the long run.<\/p>\n

The progressive measure of national success is predicated on how many people we can hook on government assistance, rather than how many people we can free from it.<\/p>\n

It has long been known that welfare\u2019s incentives undercut work and family formation and discourage self-sufficiency.<\/p>\n

And we\u2019ve been spending more on social safety-net programs, even though we have less poverty today than ever before.<\/p>\n

The poverty rate in the United States was nearly 22% when we first began recording it in 1959.<\/p>\n

By 1974, roughly 12% of Americans lived in poverty.<\/p>\n

Today, it\u2019s approximately 11%.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, real federal welfare spending has increased by over 760% since then.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Over the past 50-plus years, the poverty rate has remained incredibly consistent.<\/p>\n

You can oppose war for a lot of reasons, but spending on defense is not a primary driver of debt, nor does it inhibit us from helping the needy.<\/p>\n

Indeed, federal military spending is one of the few major budget categories that clearly falls under Congress\u2019 enumerated powers.<\/p>\n

And one of the vital responsibilities of the federal government is protecting the homeland \u2014 not expanding the dependent class.<\/p>\n

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David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do the math, Zo: The United States spends immense amounts of money feeding and caring for the poor \u2014 far more than it does on war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nMamdani's hit on US military is economic idiocy \u2014 here's the truth - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8320\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mamdani's hit on US military is economic idiocy \u2014 here's the truth - 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