This chart represents the 2007-2008 U.S. discretionary budget, the portion of the budget that the President and Congress create each year. It does not include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the national debt which are not discretionary spending.
It's funny how little of our discretionary budget pie goes to life, and how much of it goes to death.
All of the money comes from "We the People," but most of the discretionary dollars don't.
Take out Iraq -- a pointless war built on lies that is leaving us impoverished -- and the equation changes quite a lot.
I'm just saying.
Before Iraq, gasoline was $2 a gallon cheaper.
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2 comments:
You want to go back and look at that again, including the non-discretionary budget?
$608 billion on Social Security, $386 billion on Medicare, $209 billion on Medicaid and SCHIP, $318 billion on other non-discretionary spending. It totals more than 1 1/2 trillion dollars.
Just something to throw into the mix, when people complain about how we're spending all of our money on war.
Our government is, in fact, spending most of its money on buying votes - FDRs greatest and most enduring legacy.
The pie chart, as noted, is about NON-discretionary spending, and it is absolutely correct. NON-discretionary spending is what policians can actually make choices about. This is the government that can be governed.
As for Social Security and Medicare, they have been terrific programs that have worked better than promised, and which are MORE solvent than private pensions or private health care insurance programs. And, as I once pointed out to the host of a right-wing Christian radio show in Orange County, California, the genesis of both ideas (pardon the pun) can be found in Genesis 41. Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, but the delivered word of God is that we should save in the sunny days of our youth in expectation for the winter of old age (aesop suggeste the same lesson in the story of the ant and the grasshopper). And where should we put the savings? In Pharoah's coffers.
Of course, Jesus was a Democracrat (a union carpenter, no less), but Moses was an independent, and Joseph was a Conservative, so it seems to me that Medicare and Social Security have pretty strong bi-paritan support among "We The People."
And for the record, Social Security was created in 1935because of the FAILURE of the private system (and not just in 1929, but long before that), and Medicare was created in 1965 because of a similar failure of the private health care system.
And, of course, the failure of the private system continue to this day -- just look at any list of folks who got sick and had their insurance coverage cut, and take a gander at what happens to your pension when a company goes bankrupt (see "Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation" about that).
P.
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