Taxes in the US go to a cluster of major items. Medicare, other medical, Social Security, interest, VA benefits and veteran's medical care, federal spending on the indigent or disabled, and Defense. Those together are 94% of annual federal spending.
None of that spending is subject to that much debate; all the remaining "debate" is over the remaining 6%.
I don't think defense is really as discretionary as it seems. A lot of it is effectively bribing and menacing trading partners to keep trading with the US on favorable terms through cash transfers, provision of military equipment, training, and mutual defense pacts among other diplomatic agreements.
Japan didn't just decide on its own free will to become a pacifist country dedicated to exporting cheap, high-quality manufactured goods to the United States. General MacArthur did that.
Everything on your list but VA benefits and defense are very regularly called into question. Even VA benefits are questioned pretty regularly, but that tends to be put down pretty quickly.
> A lot of it is effectively bribing and menacing trading partners
That's just a byproduct of propping up the military industrial complex; have to have conflicts to justify giving the primes sole-source cost+ contracts so they can meet their quarterly EPS targets.
I think there is a lot of discord over medicare/medical, social security, and interest at least, but maybe I'm just in a bubble.