How much did the U.S. federal government spend in a year?

How to get close to this number

Take a share of the economy. The country has an economy of around twenty-eight trillion dollars, and federal spending runs somewhere around a quarter of it. A quarter of twenty-eight trillion gives a figure in the high single-digit trillions, which is the right region.

The composition in the explanation is what matters more than the total: pensions, health programmes, defence and debt interest together account for most of it. Discretionary spending — everything a government actively decides each year — is a minority of the budget, which is why budget debates produce so little change.

The interest figure is the one that should alarm: debt service now costs more than the entire defence budget did a decade ago. Interest is the one line that grows without any policy decision, compounds automatically, and crowds out everything else — and it is the fastest-growing category in the budget.