The other day, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani told Qatari state media that the United States was "spending tens of billions of dollars on killing people" when that money "could have been used to make life easier" for the public. "There always seems to be money for war," he went on, "but not to feed the poor."

The United States, in reality, spends immense amounts of money feeding and taking care of the poor — far more than it does on war.

Yet, if you listened to the Left, you'd think military spending was driving the debt and squeezing the poor. National defense comprises around 13% of the federal budget, far less than the primary drivers of debt, Social Security and Medicare.

We spend less on the military than we do paying down the interest on our immense $40 trillion national debt.

The federal government spends around $1.3 trillion each year on means-tested welfare and "anti-poverty" programs. That's more than the national budget of Germany.

There are somewhere in the vicinity of 80 individual federal programs providing aid to the poor. Over 36 million people in the U.S. receive food stamps, for instance, which is around 11% of the population.

Around 100 million Americans receive some form of government assistance. Virtually none of them pay federal individual income tax.

None of this accounts for local programs. Over 23% of an average state's expenditures go to welfare, which is not only more than they spend on public schools but far more than they spend on police, hospitals and roads combined.

Then there are city government programs. In Mamdani's New York, a record $2.71 billion in direct welfare cash assistance payments were sent out in 2025, a 70% spike from 2022. New York City also spent $14.63 billion on social programs for the poor. It spends less than half on the police.

A crude back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that the average family in New York probably contributes more than $11,000 each year to government programs that help those living below the poverty line.

On the other hand, in the larger scheme of things, we spend little on "bombs." In a typical fiscal year, baseline spending on munitions is around $30 billion. (Because of the Iran war, that number has spiked to $76 billion.)

Don't get me wrong, as a raw number, that's a lot. And no one can credibly argue that the Pentagon has been a good steward when it comes to military spending.

But in perspective, the $919 billion in federal and state funding of Medicaid last year was more than all the money we've spent on munitions for over 15 years. The U.S. GDP was over $30 trillion in 2025. Around 3% of it was spent on national defense.

Leftists love to point out that the U.S. devotes more money to its military than the next six countries combined. It's true. Being a hyperpower doesn't come cheap. The U.S. also spends more on welfare and entitlement programs — cars, tech, housing and virtually everything — than the next six countries combined.

If you believe that the state isn't sufficiently assisting the poor, there are thousands of other ways to get involved. Around 70% of Americans reportedly give charity each year, amounting to an estimated $617 billion in 2025 — more than the next six countries combined.

Of course, no amount will ever be enough for people who believe all economic activity should be siphoned into state agencies for proper redistribution.

Nor will it be enough for people who believe funding is the only way to mitigate poverty. The broader debate, virtually impossible to broach these days, is whether endlessly increasing welfare actually helps in the long run.

The progressive measure of national success is predicated on how many people we can hook on government assistance rather than how many people we can free from it. It has long been known that welfare's incentives undercut work and family formation and discourage self-sufficiency.

And we have been spending more on social safety net programs, even though we have less poverty today than ever before. The poverty rate in the U.S. was nearly 22% when we first began recording it in 1959. By 1974, roughly 12% of Americans lived in poverty. Today, it's approximately 11%.

Meanwhile, real federal welfare spending has increased by over 760% since then. Over the past 50-plus years, the poverty rate has remained incredibly consistent.

You can oppose war for a lot of reasons, but spending on defense is not a primary driver of debt, nor does it inhibit us from helping the needy. Indeed, federal military spending is one of the few major budget categories that clearly falls under Congress' enumerated powers. And one of the vital responsibilities of the federal government is protecting the homeland, not expanding the dependent class.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, "How To Kill a Republic," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.