Americans enjoy a strong national defense. As of April 2017, the U.S. spent $611 billion on defense, which, as the Peterson Foundation points out, is "more than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France and Japan combined." Additionally, "the United States has historically devoted a larger share of its economy to defense than many of its key allies."
The military accounts for about half of all discretionary spending in America.
Education spending accounts for 6 percent of discretionary spending, and Medicare and health spending accounts for another 6 percent.

While some of the $8.5 trillion in unaccounted for outlays may have gone to pay for black budget stuff, there's no doubt a lot of it was war profiteering and outright fraud, pure and simple.

Republicans don't just wrap themselves in the flag and have gushing praise for the military because of patriotism (look at all the chickenhawks) it's because they want money for their states. The majority of our large military installations are in the South and protecting those areas means $$$$. But of course we need them - the Mexicans could invade you know and that Spanish Armada could just pop back up at any time.

Except they're a developing country; we could do so much better than this.

The effective total tax rate for Americans varies, too: "The top 1 percent of American taxpayers still pay an effective tax rate of approximately 31.9 percent, on average, while the bottom 20 percent of the population pays an average of approximately 3.9 percent," reports the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

that we've heard for so long regarding healthcare and education. Why not demand something for your tax dollars besides 64 percent of them going to the Pentagon?

Likewise, the foolish people who say they don't want to pay for sick people, when in fact that is what you do with your insurance payments regardless.