What portion of the US federal budget goes to foreign countries?
Americans always rank foreign aid expenditures as one of the biggest if not the biggest chunk of the budget. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 4 in 10 think it ranks as either the #1 or #2 largest area of spending.
People routinely say foreign aid is larger than spending on the military, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare:
…the average American believed that a whopping 25 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. The average respondent also thought that the appropriate level of foreign aid would be about 10 percent of the budget — 10 times the current level. Five Myths about Foreign Aid, Washington Post, April 2011
The reality? One percent. Yes a mere 1% of the budget goes to foreign countries and global health is a small portion of it. Vaccines a smaller portion still.