Gallop poll says some of us think up to 51%. Washington Post says much less. Weigh in guys while I sit back and watch.
http://wapo.st/1uNFrW8

All of it.

^^^^This^^^^

Really? 32 cents of every tax dollar is spent on the military and veterans benefits. You want to get rid of that?

Every bit that doesn't go the the Department of Defense, and at least half that does.

Excise taxes could and should cover that segment, as appropriate.

I don't know actual numbers. But I'll say a lot. How many people work in the federal government that can't be fired? I'm not saying X needs to be fired, but I kind of like having that option or at least that threat.

Just off the top of my head on that chart looks like we're getting screwed on veterans benefits and education just as a start.

KyWindageII: All of it - minus the portion of my federal tax that goes to the Defense Department (and tragically some of that is wasted as well!)!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Id say around 50% is wasted. Thats not counting the interest on the debt because defaulting on it would suck, but in a better run country we wouldn't be paying interest because we wouldn't have any substantial debt.

A sch!tpot.

For once, I gotta agree with VG�.as long as the pentagon is buying $4000 hammers and $6000 toilet seats�I think a goodly portion of the defense end is being wasted.

Note that the poll covers state and local taxes as well. In Kentucky I suspect there is more abuse of tax dollars at those levels than anyone would suspect. Yet we reelect the same folks over and over.

One has only to walk around Capitol Hill here to see how much is getting wasted�or even something as simple as calling a state office.
Count how many state employees ( I refuse to call them workers..) are on duty at their desks�.

The federal government has only 3 duties:
1. protect my borders (fail)
2. deliver my mail (fail)
3. stay out of my life (BIG TIME FAIL)

Any expenditures beyond those are wasted.

The bunch that illegitimately "sort" their way into some sort of disability across the board must be 20%, at least...

About right but don't exclude veterans' benefits.

There are a few other necessities, but it is fair to say there is a lot of waste throughout. Not the least in DC itself.

The DOD wastes huge amounts of money, I saw it all the time during my 10 years in the marine corps and that was before the current push for gays in the military. I can't imagine how much productivity is now being wasted from the endless diversity & tolerance classes that they're forced to sit through. Integrating women cost billions in lost productivity & wasted time, the cost for gays must be astronomical.

When government and big government lovers are choosing what constitutes waste, we'll never get an accurate picture.

Most of it.

I would put it somewhere around 80% of discretionary funding. I mean, look at NASA. Most of us here would agree that their mission is noble, but I will bet a private company accomplish everything they could accomplish in 20% of the time, for 10% of the cost, with greater reliability. And SpaceX has done better than that....

In this neck of the woods, the government does "nuclear energy research". These are the engineers that loudly proclaimed that [bleep] could not possibly happen. OOPS. And what has 1,000 plus engineering types produced for the country in the last 30 years? Not a single lousy thing.

Administering government "benefits"? yeah, that's been a great succes...

edited to add: Fu-ko-shima got bleeped? Really?

certainly the portion that funds 'the war on poverty', and the other 'wars' on various social ills is wasted.

Very true. And they hate who feeds them.

I don't see that dollar chart as being accurate either. There just isn't enough entitlement dollars reflected there.

Sorry the facts don't fit your agenda. Easy to pick on the inner city blacks, but white folks are some of the biggest recipients of tax payer dollars. Over 4 million folks on the tax payer payroll including retirement benefits while still able bodied, and folks get all up in arms over the blacks. Not to mention QE and bailouts which benefited the whites.. how much did that cost us?

Yeah, it's not like those on retirement benefits didn't provide something for 20+ years. What are the jigs doing, what have the provided, what jobs have they done?

This^^^.

None of the money is wasted according to the thinking of some. Good and necessary things are done with some of the money and the rest is spent to destroy us, by developing an ever growing parasitic, entitlement population which is in the process of turning on us.

I don't recall mentioning blacks or any race.

I mentioned entitlement dollars.

Do you see something I don't?

As for what I said about those that receive entitlement dollars hating conservatives.... All you have to do is look at election results to bear with that fact. They vote themselves those entitlements. They hate those that would threaten to take them away.

What's YOUR agenda?

Calvin lives in a [bleep] cave.

Some in montucky suffer the same delusion with respect to different types of humanity. Exposure to those different types results in truth overtaking being PC. I think it is more prevalent in those indoctrinated in school and by by the TV/movie industry, and a lack of exposure to the way things really are in places with a lot of blacks.

Govt frivolity with or money has not helped the situation.

Is it your position that there is no waste in either of the two? miles