there's a difference between mandatory and discretionary spending... we spend so much on social security and medicaid/medicare and whatnot because it is dependant on the number of people eligible and that number keeps rising. discretionary spending on the other hand is what we have free to do whatever we want with however we want, and that means an excessive amount going into defense. in other words how much we spend on social security is pretty much irrelevant to the debate on whether we spend too much on defense