OtherWords
Lindsay Koshgarian
04/09/2025
Each year for Tax Day, my colleagues and I at the Institute for Policy Studies release a tax receipt so you can learn where your taxes are actually going.
This year, you may be more worried about the price of eggs than your tax dollars. But with President Trump now urging a $1 trillion military budget, it’s worth thinking about what we’re already spending.
Last year, the average taxpayer paid $3,707 for weapons and wars. That’s the equivalent of 628 dozen eggs. So if you thought buying a dozen or two a week for your family was taxing, well, that’s just the beginning.
Yet the president and his allies in Congress are planning on spending more for war and mass deportations — and less on just about everything else.
And it is a war budget, make no mistake. President Trump has escalated bombing in Yemen and doubled down on providing weapons to Israel, raising the chances of a new, full-blown Middle East war.
The president is also flirting with war with China, both through his trade war but also more directly. Much of the Pentagon’s future spending is in preparation for a war with China.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk and DOGE are supposed to save money. But look at what they’re cutting: the average taxpayer paid just $39 for USAID last year, the international aid program that DOGE eliminated. For the cost of just six dozen eggs per taxpayer, that saved millions of lives — including millions of children who are now at risk.
