Guess What Our Government Is Doing With 600 Billion Dollars

[Playinghardball]

Failing schools. Crumbling infrastructure. Increasing poverty. Yet we still spend hundreds of billions on our bloated military budget. It’s time to reallocate spending to what really counts.


Found on Being Liberal’s Facebook page

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[Demonaut]

2. does this graph take into account medicare/medicade and tricare?

education and housing I can't argue

[truedelphi]

8. For one thing, can I point out, that if our government didn't foster

Sending our jobs overseas, not as many people would be on medicade...

Give the people the jobs they deserve, and quit having visas for foreign computer workers.

As I've related before, our household has experienced someone working for Sallie Mae, calling to see about student loan payments. The person was in a distant foreign land, and could barely speak English. (The programs you need to discuss with such a person are very much coached in legalese, and the last thing you need is someone who can't speak English and who has no training.)

Where in the world are our Senators and House Reps on this one?

How can we pay back student loans if even the jobs calling about payment of such are going to people in Bangladesh or somewhere?

[Demonaut]

10. okay....didn't answer the question posted

I just want to see a accurate pie chart of that shows "true" expenditures of these programs

I want accuracy and truth rather than talking points, lies or half truths

Hyperbole is the fuel of the right.

And to be clear, I'm not attacking the op, if he/she believes this is true, great

[truedelphi]

20. I can't find a single pie chart graph or discussion on the sites

That are tabulating the Federal expenses that is relating to the prison expenditures. (Surely all those Federal prisons cost us something.)

I understand your frustration.

[lefty16]

11. Graph isn't accurate

It is missing medicare/medicade.

Below is the 2012 budget in Billions.

Total Budget 3,761

25% Defense 925
23% Health Care 866
21% Pensions 806
16% Other Spending 612
11% Welfare 432
3% Education 121

[lefty16]

12. Forgot

Other Spending includes

Protection 59
Transportation 105
General Government 65
Other 142
Interest 242

[JDPriestly]

15. So the health care, pensions, other spending and education in your numbers

exclude VA programs including military pensions, VA care, etc.?

And under pensions, is Social Security which has traditionally been a self-funded program included?

[cbrer]

19. Do your figures

For welfare include corporate welfare?

[fasttense]

23. Is Tricare listed under Health Care? Because it is really a military expense.n/a

[fasttense]

22. Well the graph clearly has Health expenditures on it.

If it did NOT include medicare/medicade it wouldn't be a real graph. It would be something made up and displayed for kicks, it would be a RepubliCON fantasy graph. (I would think tricare would be under military spending because the military has to deal with injuries and medical problems not common in the general population. You know the military sends all those people over to get shoot at and injured, they should fix them up as best they can if the person lives.)

Education, housing and prisons are funded through the states (not totally by the states but through them with matching funds being added) and are not normally calculated into federal tax expenditures. But I have seen pie charts with the federal side of the spending on those items listed and it really does NOT make much of a difference.

[Angry Dragon]

3. priorities

[indepat]

4. But what magnificent kill ratios we can achieve in our pre-emptive (PNAC-style)

wars by having all this advanced weaponry.

[Initech]

6. George Carlin used to refer to war as the "bigger dick foreign policy at work"

[woo me with science]

29. Yup. Gotta keep everything in context.

[indepat]

34. Sheer madness, sheer insanity. The quality of life of the people sacrificed to feed the MIC

so the hearts and minds of people can be won through global hegemony. Sheer madness.

[Initech]

5. We'll bend over backwards to keep the fucking war machine happy..

Despite the fact that we're wasting infinite money we don't have to keep these pointless wars going... at the expense of our social safety nets. The war machine has our government by the throat and is not letting go - these scum fucks want it all.

[woo me with science]

18. As long as war is profitable to banks and corporations, we will go to war.

The Military Industrial Complex is a vast and central weapon of profit for the one percent, not just from the funding of weapons, but through the bankruptcy and devastation of countries, followed by rebuilding/restructuring economic and political systems to their advantage.

That is why foreign policy does not change much from administration to administration, and why the war budget is always protected or concealed.

Corporations have no morality. They operate for profit and the bottom line, period. That is why it is so deadly dangerous to cede our government, our lives, and our children's lives to them.

Blood for profit will not stop until we get the corporate money out of our government.

[dotymed]

7. I wonder what percentage of that $600 billion

goes to develop and produce "non-lethal weapons" to combat legal protestors?

[sad sally]

9. What isn't shown is the interest on this debt.

In 2009, the interest on the national debt created by military spending was $390 billion. Add another few years, plus the sky-rocketing mental health care costs that will be coming,and there's some serious outlay of cash. But, according to our leaders, war is necessary to fight terror.

[Ford_Prefect]

13. Much of the War and War Machine budgeting is hidden as well.

Funds for support systems, personnel, and projects broken out into seemingly benign headings under non-defense agencies. Does this graphic include the secondary impact of paying for public health and other cost impacts of war-caused situations on home front (family stress for example) and war production & services?

This is not to mention the cost of projects not funded due to the money being spent on the War Machinery and systems.

Agent Orange has had ongoing effects and we are still paying for it. The military fuel use during the war in Iraq was said to be 3 times what it was here. The simple cost of fuel was huge and amplified by the way it was contracted. The ongoing effect on environment has yet to be fully tallied. These are 2 simple examples but there are more than we can list here.

[woo me with science]

16. Excellent post. nt

[truedelphi]

21. Boy do I hear you. n/t

[Yo_Mama]

14. Misinformation in the graph

You can see the outlays planned for this fiscal year in the latest monthly Treasury report:
http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0212.pdf

From largest to smallest major categories:
HHS (Health and Human Services): 871 billion. (Includes Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP)
SSA (Social Security) 827 billion. (SS, DI, SSI)
DOD (Dept of Defense) 688 billion.
Dept of Agriculture 150 billion. (Includes food stamps, WIC = about 42 billion)
VA (Veterans Affaids) 129 billion.
Treasury (other, ex-interest) 129 billion. (IRS mostly)
DOL (Dept of Labor) 127 billion. (Includes training and unemployment benefits)
Dept of Education 98 billion.
OPM (federal government) 87 billion.
Dept of Transportation 84 billion.

There's plenty more, but the numbers drop off pretty hard fpr other categories. Total outlays for this fiscal year are expected to be about 3,795 billion. HHS plus SSA together are about 44% of the budget. DoD is 18%.

Personally I think we should be bailing out of Afghanistan and generally being less aggressive, but the graph is not showing the real budgetary picture. Our total deficit this year is going to be over 1 trillion - we could not spend a penny on DoD this year and still have a very substantial budget deficit. So far this year we have paid 191 billion on the national debt in interest. About half of the 450 billion figure is in reality not paid at all - that's interest credited in a book transaction to all the trust funds - SS, DI, HI, federal retirements, etc.

[fasttense]

24. Social Security is self funded and this does not take into account the almost $3 Trillion in notes.

the treasurery has saved to pay Social Security. So you should take current planned expeditures minus the savings to get an actual image of what percent Socail Security will be taking from the tax dollar pool. So, $3 Trillion(savings in notes) - $827 Billion = $2.173 Trillion to the good.


Why wouldn't the VA be listed under the military? It is a military expense. I would lump them togeather with DOD because without war, there would be no customers for the VA.

[Yo_Mama]

25. As to your points

SS is not self-funded. Incoming taxes pay for most of it. Right now SS is running more than 150 billion dollars in the hole (benefits plus costs exceed annual revenue by that amount for 2012). SS is now adding significantly to the deficit each year, and the new projections are that it will continue to do so even if payroll taxes are increased by 2% to come back to normal levels.

We have no money saved at all for SS. Every penny that isn't covered by normal revenues either has to be paid for with increased taxes or increased borrowing. Quoting from CBO:
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/March2012Baseline.pdf

Over the longer term, budgetary challenges will remain even if the fiscal policies specified by current law come to
pass—and the challenges will be much more acute if those policies do not remain in place. Under both CBO’s baseline and its alternative fiscal scenario, the aging of the population and rising costs for health care will push spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs considerably higher as a percentage of GDP. If that rising level of spending is coupled with revenues that are held close to their average percentage of GDP for the past 40 years (rather than being allowed to increase, as under current law), the resulting deficits will push federal debt to unsupportable levels. To prevent that outcome, policymakers will have
to substantially restrain the growth of spending for those programs, raise revenues above their historical share of GDP, or pursue some combination of those two approaches.

As for VA/DOD, I listed the numbers as they are given in the Treasury Budget, but if you think about it, VA costs are previously incurred. Even if we stopped all military operations, we'd still be paying for those amounts, so they should be in a separate bucket.

[uponit7771]

27. '..hole...'

"...SS is not self-funded. Incoming taxes pay for most of it. Right now SS is running more than 150 billion dollars in the hole (benefits plus costs exceed annual revenue by that amount for 2012). ...

Is this from the artificial hole created by borrowing from it?

If yes then there is NO HOLE, to claim there is one is to claim that the US will default on it's own bonds and that would be worse than the great depression and the great recession

[Rex]

17. The MIC owns USA(tm).

They just let us live here and pay taxes.

[uponit7771]

26. We have a MIC no doubt and it's control is disproportionate at best

[thesquanderer]

28. Misleading, if that's federal spending

Most housing and eduction government spending is done by the state, not the federal government, and that's by design. Saying that the federal government does a poor job at funding these things is kind of like saying that the police department does a poor job at putting out fires.

[midnight]

30. Their goes the deficit, or does that only matter when our tax dollars

are being spend to pay for health care, housing and education?

[MadHound]

31. That is about half of what we spend on our military

As a general rule of thumb, total military spending is roughly twice of the DoD budget. The reasons for this are multi-fold. First, much of the military budget is not part of the DoD budget, but rather foisted upon other departments. For instance, the budget for the maintenance and upgrade of our nuclear bomb fleet, clearly a military expenditure, is actually counted under the Dept. of Energy budget. This is repeated throughout the government, with military spending being disguised as spending by other departments. Second, there are lots of black budgets voted on that are ultimately military in nature, but aren't counted as part of the DoD budget.

The upshot is that, by best estimates, current total military spending is running at 1.2 trillion, or roughly half our total budget. It is this sort of military spending that is bankrupting our country. If we don't dramatically cut military spending quickly, we will go the way of the Soviet Union, spending all our money on war while leaving the people to suffer here at home. We see that happening already, and it is only going to get worse.

[ejbr]

32. AMEN!!! n/t

[glinda]

33. So this is why my elderly parents have no health care choices....

[woo me with science]

35. K&R