Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from a newsletter of the National Priorities Project Sign up here for their newsletter.
“We need a budget that invests in the things we want more of and millions rely on – things like education, health care, clean energy, and food assistance for struggling Americans. We’ll only get there if we push back on the politics that favor enriching billionaires and war-profiteering corporations over taking care of our communities.”
Each year the National Priorities Project releases a tax receipt that shows where your federal income taxes went.
We’re hearing a lot these days about government efficiency and waste, but most people don’t have a great idea of what government services and programs actually cost in the first place.
And with the president planning the country’s first $1 trillion war budget and scaling up detention and deportations amidst massive cuts to federal programs, Americans deserve to know how expensive (or not so expensive) these programs already are. Case in point: the average taxpayer paid $3,707 for weapons and war and just $39 for foreign aid under USAID, which Trump and Musk just decimated.
FACT SHEET: YOUR 2025 TAX DAY RECEIPT
This year, our receipt compares taxes paid by the average taxpayer on a host of programs to the benchmark of our times – the price of a dozen eggs. In February 2025, the average price for a dozen eggs was $5.90.
In 2024, we found that the average taxpayer gave:
- $3,707 for weapons and war (628 dozen eggs), including $1,430 toward all Pentagon contractors (242 dozen eggs), and $5.82 for the Pentagon contracts with SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company (about a dozen eggs).
- $98 for deportations, immigrant detentions and border control (16 dozen eggs), vs. just $26 for refugee assistance (four dozen eggs), which the current administration has frozen.
- $149 for the National Institutes of Health, home of lifesaving medical and cancer research (25 dozen eggs); $39 for USAID, the international aid program that provides lifesaving food and medical help to millions (6 dozen eggs); and one penny for the Interagency Council on Homelessness that coordinates across agencies to end homelessness (no eggs). Each of these programs face elimination or severe cuts by President Trump and Elon Musk.
This just doesn’t make any sense.
We don’t need Trump’s plans for more weapons and war, mass deportations, or a massive tax cut for the wealthiest among us.
We need a budget that invests in the things we want more of and millions rely on – things like education, health care, clean energy, and food assistance for struggling Americans. We’ll only get there if we push back on the politics that favor enriching billionaires and war-profiteering corporations over taking care of our communities.
In solidarity,
Lindsay, Alliyah, Hanna, and Aspen
The National Priorities project tracks federal spending on the military and promotes a U.S. federal budget that represents Americans' priorities, including funding for people's issues such as inequality, unemployment, education, health and the need to build a green economy.
