This pie chart lies about food stamps

The pie chart seems to be fairly accurate, but the claim about food stamps is not. The first thing to know about the chart is that it represents discretionary spending, meaning expenditures over which there is discretion about how much is spent on what. One may think that all spending is discretionary, but in fact almost two-thirds of it goes instead to mandatory spending, which means that which the federal government is required by law to fund. A person who qualifies for a federal benefit, such as Medicare, or Social Security, or food stamps, at no point can the agency say “No, sorry, we’ve spent all our money.” Everyone who meets the criteria gets the benefit, making it mandatory spending.

For fiscal year 2015 federal military spending is $598.5 billion. The U.S. has the largest military budget in the world by a lot, spending more than the next ten countries combined. This is where over half of discretionary spending in the federal government goes, and in my view it borders on the obscene. Expenditures for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, was just under $70 billion for 2015. This is a little under 12% of the dollar amount spent on the military, whereas the lying text on the pie chart would have you believe food stamps get less than 2% than the military does.

It is actually the case that costs for SNAP are falling. Part of the reason for this is because there has been economic recovery from the recession of 2008–09 but also because there is a limit of three months of benefits for unemployed adults who are not supporting minor children. Thus a person who remains out of work is not able to continue to draw the SNAP benefit. Military spending has also decreased, but that trend may not continue.

One can make an argument that we spend far too much on the military without resorting to false information such as lying about what is being represented on a pie chart.