Method

Methodology

States

To calculate states’ contribution to military funding to Israel, we took each state’s federal income tax amount and divided it by the total federal income tax amount of the United States, as reported by the IRS in FY2022, to find the percentage of income tax from each state. Then we multiplied that percentage by the total federal allocation of military funding to Israel in the year 2025 (about $12 billion).

For example, residents of Alabama paid 0.8877% of total federal income tax ($18,688,453/$2,105,345,646). Therefore, we estimated residents of Alabama pay $106,520,008 in military funding to Israel ($12 billion X 0.8877%).

Cities

To calculate cities’ contribution, we used data reported by the US Census Bureau in its 2021 American Community Survey (ACS) (5-Year Estimate) according to the SimpleMaps cities database. We took the 2025 amount of U.S. military funding to Israel ($12,000,000,000) and divided it by the total households in the U.S. to find the average amount paid to Israel per household. We then multiplied that figure by the number of households in each city to determine the contribution for taxpayers in that city through their federal tax dollars.

BUDGETARY TRADE-OFFS

To calculate how many people could be served through another governmental program, we divided the amount of military funding to Israel for a geographical unit by the average national per capita cost for these programs. The costs are as follows, according to the National Priorities Project:

  • $3,485 per child receiving free or low-cost healthcare through Medicaid

  • $94,048.45 per elementary school teacher annual salary

  • $529.88 per household with solar electricity produced for a year

  • $37,370.63 per student with their loan debt canceled.

A few other costs were pulled from other sources:

For example, with residents of Alabama contributing an estimated $106,520,008 in military funding to Israel, this amount of money could fund instead one of the following:

  • 5,523 households with a free year of rent ($106,520,008/$19,284)

  • 17,597 families with a year’s free groceries ($106,520,008/$6,053)

  • 30,565 children receiving free or low-cost healthcare for one year ($106,520,008/$3,485)

  • 1,132 elementary school teachers ($106,520,008/$94,048.45)

  • 201,026 households with solar electricity produced for a year ($106,520,008/$529.88)

  • 2,850 students with their loan debt canceled ($106,520,008/$37,370.63)

Check our math

If you’d like to see the data set for states, you can download it as an Excel spreadsheet. We are unable to post the data set for cities due to licensing permissions; it is sourced from SimpleMaps.

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