They are the amount you pay the Government in exchange for certain services.
The biggest items we pay for are National Defense, various entitlement program, and the Interest on the National Debt.
It might be better to say we pay for Military services since most of it has a very tenuous line to actual defense of this country.
In fact its fairly safe to say that with our Nuclear Arsenal, it is unlikely that anyone would overtly attack us.
Before World War 2 we tended to keep a fairly small active army when we weren't actually at war.
Following that war, we perceived a need to counter the threat of worldwide communist expansion and defend our European Allies via NATO.
The chart below shows the last 100 years of spending and we see the increase of WW1 followed by a decrease and the increase of WW2 followed by a decrease. However the post war amounts dwarf the prewar amounts and have continued.
What have we gotten for this spending? Well the country has not been invaded but we have thousands of dead young people because of Korea, Vietnam and the War on Terror.
The question is, what do we gain by all this spending? Consider how much less the National Debt would be if we curtailed it a bit?
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