Its not slim majorities. (51%)
Entitlement spending is much larger then "corporate welfare", and "farm subsidies" and "pork" (as normally defined) combined.
"Spending on these social programs was $1.3 trillion in 2005, up an inflation-adjusted 22% since 2000 and accounting for more than half of federal spending. Enrollment growth was responsible for three-fourths of the spending increase, according to USA TODAY's analysis of federal enrollment and spending data. Higher benefits accounted for the rest."
usatoday.com
In the chart linked to below "mandatory spending" doesn't include interest (which has a separate category) so it is entitlement spending. Which is about as big as everything else put together. The majority of the non-entitlement spending is not transfer payments or direct subsidies. Defense and interest are the biggest parts.
cbo.gov
Social securities retirement spending alone is larger the corporate and farm subsidies and goes 100% to the elderly. As for 2002 63% of social security spending went to retirees. ( epinet.org found at epinet.org ) The other 37% goes to families of retired and disabled workers, survivors, and disabled workers. Many of them are also elderly. The majority of them elderly or not are middle class.
Medicare is for the elderly, not targeted by wealth.
Which leaves us with Medicaid, which is targeted towards the poor. So neither the middle class nor the wealthy get it, which means we can drop it from consideration of the comparative benefits that go to the wealthy or the middle class.
Some more up to date figures are here
cbo.gov
The 2004 figures are actual the rest are projections.
2004 social security 491.5 billion, medicare 297.4 billion for a total of $788.9 billion.
Most of that nearly $800 billion goes to the middle class, and another chunk goes to the poor. The rich don't get a lot of it because they are not a large percentage of either the overall population or the elderly population. Also there are other programs that transfer money to the middle class.
Total discretionary outlays are 895.0 billion of which only 407.1 billion is domestic non-defense spending. Even if every single dollar of this domestic non-defense spending was subsidies to the rich it would still be only slightly over half of Medicare + Social Security spending. However the majority of this spending does not go to subsidies and transfer payments.
CATO (a very anti-corporate welfare organization) calculated corporate welfare as $75 billion in 1999. Sure its increased since then but this gives you some perspective. There measurement is rather comprehensive. It includes things like farm programs, advertising subsidies, "economic research", "export enhancement", support for minority businesses, the "next generation internet" program, aid for airports, research on electric vehicles, even energy conservation programs, and the TVA, and a some of NASA's research budget. Some people wouldn't consider all of this to be subsidies, much of it isn't transfer payments, and some of it doesn't go to wealthy people.
cato.org
(warning following link will be slow on dial up, and will be larger then almost everyone's screen)
deviantart.com is a relatively comprehensive breakdown of federal discretionary spending. Its not completely up to date but is only a couple of years old so its still useful. Military spending is about half. The images are to scale with the programs and the spending on each department or major program is listed. Add up everything you consider to be a subsidy to the rich or a program riddled with corporate welfare. I don't think you can touch entitlement spending. Link found at catallarchy.net
If you need more detail you can go here
whitehouse.gov
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