how much of it is spent on federal employees and their pay

are you sure you know the answers to see how the federal government spends money

we'll look at 2012 since we have pretty complete data

and see how the budget is broken down we'll dig out the key facts

and spare you as much as possible but there's going to be a lot of numbers

this time around

so get ready in 2012

the amount spent was approximately 3.54 trillion dollars

that's 1.28 trillion dollars in discretionary spending

2.24 trillion dollars in mandatory spending

and 222 billion dollars in interest on the debt

the government also received some money through specific taxes

for specific purposes

which goes directly to those accounts and is tracked as income

so that we spend less regular taxes on those things

in 2012 the government got 209 billion dollars of that

we talked about the difference between mandatory and discretionary

spending in more detail

in another video but basically Congress chooses discretionary spending

in every budget

whereas mandatory spending is set by whatever law created that program

so Congress has to change the law to change the spending

now 3.54 trillion dollars

is a lot of dough let's break it down a little bit more by

budget category we spent about 678 billion

dollars on national defense

you know soldiers missiles

cyberattack teams that sort of stuff we spent 47 billion dollars on

international affairs

diplomats treaties and so on

we spent 29 billion dollars on science

space and technology stuff like government-funded research

and the space program

we spent 15 billion dollars on energy

be it in research or supplies we spent 41 billion dollars on the environment

and natural resources

that means both enforcing environmental regulations

and managing natural resources on public lands

we spent 18 billion dollars on agriculture

for things like farm subsidies we spent 93 billion dollars on transportation

whether it's airplanes boats trains

or roads this includes both regulating transportation

and building it we spent 25 billion dollars on

community and regional development

this is giving out money to cities communities

and states to build housing or other developments

we spent 91 billion dollars on

education training employment and social services

that's everything from preschool to college with some vocational training and

benefits to students' families as well

we spent 347 billion dollars on health

which includes both paying to provide people with health care

and also spending money on health care research that's different than the 472

billion dollars we spend on medicare

which is just healthcare for seniors we spent 541 billion dollars

on income security this is the category the various assistance programs

like welfare food stamps unemployment

and so on all fall into we spent 773 billion

dollars on social security

we spent 224 billion dollars on veterans benefits

we spent 56 billion dollars on the administration of justice

this is federal cops federal prisons and federal lawyers

finally we spent 28 billion dollars on general government

this is all the stuff the government does the manage itself

this is the percentage of all of this spending goes towards each category

some of these are still pretty big categories though

so let's split them up a bit more within the defense budget

152 billion dollars was spent on personnel

282 billion was spent on operations and maintenance

124 billion was spent on procurement

meaning buying things 70 billion was spent on research

development testing and evaluation

14 billion was spent on military construction

2 billion was spent on family housing 19 billion was spent on

atomic defense activities

and 12 billion was spent on other unnamed defense-related activities

this either means military intelligence and other top secret stuff

or it means we finally built that giant fighting robot I've been asking for

within the international affairs budget 22 billion dollars were

spent on foreign aid

11 billion on military or police aid

13 billion on conducting foreign affairs: diplomacy and office supplies

and 1.5 billion on information exchange activities and

creating media and news to highlight the United States

the income security category is broken down this way

8 billion dollars on retirement and disability insurance programs that aren't

Social Security 122 billion dollars on retirement and disability

for federal employees 94 billion on unemployment benefits

48 billion on housing aid 107 billion on food aid

and another 162 billion in other categories

that includes refugee aid direct cash payments

and the costs of administering these programs

bear in mind that these are really big categories with a lot of money in them

money can be spent a lot of ways within those categories

another way to break down spending is to count how much gets spent

by the different major federal agencies

this is what the breakdown of the whole budget looks by agency

as you can see a lot of the agencies get less than a percent of the total

now how many employees does the federal government have

we have figures from September of 2012

all the employees in the judicial branch come to about 33,000

all of the legislative branches employees come to about 29,000

all of the agencies in the executive branch together have about

2,696,000 employees

this is the breakdown by agency

the average Federal salary is 78 thousand dollars

the median salary where half of them are above

and half below is 74 thousand dollars

74% of federal employees have

college or graduate degrees

and we're done now you've waded through all of this

not only can you have informed debates you also impress people

in bar trivia games

focused on the federal budget, so never

and there you have it