Here are some interesting facts I gleaned from the February 15th issue of “Letters From An American.”

— Americans think the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid because they think it spends about 25% of the federal budget on such aid while they say it should only spend about 10%. In fact, it spends only about 1% on foreign aid

— …while right-wing leaders insist that the government is bloated, in fact, as Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution noted last month, the U.S. population has grown by about 68% in the last 50 years while the size of the federal government’s workforce has actually shrunk.

— ..federal spending has expanded by five times as the U.S. has turned both to technology and to federal contractors, who outnumber federal workers by more than two to one.

— …only about 29% of Americans wanted to see the elimination of a large number of federal jobs, with 40% opposed (29% had no opinion). Instead, 67% of adults believed the U.S. is spending too little on Social Security, 65% thought it was spending too little on education, 62% thought there is too little aid for the poor, 61% thought there is too little spending on Medicare, and 55% thought there is too little spending on Medicaid. Fifty-one percent thought the U.S. should spend more on border security.

— Now MAGA voters are now discovering that much of what billionaire Elon Musk is cutting as “waste, fraud, and corruption” is programs that benefit them, often more than they benefit Democratic-dominated states.

–[the Education] Department provides grants for schools in low-income communities as well as money for educating students with special needs: eight of the ten states receiving the most federal money for their K–12 schools are dominated by Republicans.

— …the Republican-dominated House Budget Committee presented its budget proposal to the House. It calls for adding $4.5 trillion to the budget deficit in order to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. It also calls for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and supplemental nutrition programs.

— A January AP/NORC poll found that only 12% of U.S. adults thought it would be good for billionaires to advise presidents, while 60% thought it would be bad.