Ah, indeed, I was sloppy in my wording in that prior message.

I should have said is that defense is the largest single category of discretionary spending, by a large margin. The thrust of the point remains.

Okay, addressing the main thrust:

Defense spending is absolutely a priority of this administration. SecDef Hegseth's whole thing is about reorienting the Pentagon back to American defense as the priority. Remember that getting Hegseth confirmed was a major push for the brand new admin.

So spending won't go down but will hopefully be spent more effectively.

"Effective for what?" is always the key question. Various unhinged "proposals" (invading greenland, invading panama, an iron dome-like system to cover basically all of north america to shoot down...whatever Canada and Cuba will launch at us??) suggest nothing other than full funding++, used in dumb ways (which I suppose is better than circa 2002 WoT defense spending?).

Until last November, Hegseth's "whole thing" was being a frat anchor / defense witness for Fox. Talking about him being anything like a serious figure is absurd.

You are ignoring the Veterans Benefit part to skew your numbers. Its 55% when you lump that in. You don't get to simply write that off.

That's a definition of defense spending that no one except you uses, so no I don't have to use your made up definition