# Income Security **OMB budget function 600** — the federal safety net outside of health and retirement: **~$0.70 trillion in FY2025**. It bundles the programs the political right most often labels "welfare," which makes it a perennial cut target despite being far smaller than the [[Social Security]] / [[Medicare]] / [[Net Interest on the Debt]] giants. ## What's in it - **[[SNAP]]** (food stamps) — the largest discretionary-politics flashpoint in the function. - **Refundable tax credits** paid as outlays (the EITC and Child Tax Credit refundable portions). - **Unemployment insurance**, **SSI**, federal **civilian and military retirement**, housing assistance, and child-nutrition programs. ## The RWKB angle Income Security is the second clearest case (with [[Medicaid]]) of the **rhetoric-vs-outlays** mismatch. SNAP and "welfare" dominate conservative spending rhetoric and absorb large shares of proposed cuts and **work requirements**, yet the whole function is ~10% of outlays — a fraction of the untouched mandatory giants. The [[Big Beautiful Bill]] expanded SNAP work requirements alongside its Medicaid rollback. Tracking which programs get cut (means-tested, low-constituency) versus which grow (universal, high-constituency) is the function's main analytical payoff. ## Related - [[Medicaid]] · [[Social Security]] · [[Discretionary vs Mandatory Spending]] - [[Big Beautiful Bill]] · [[Budget Functions]] - [[Federal Budget FY2025]] · [[Budget Hub]]