Ok so as we all know, the government just went through a
messy hissy fit fight over the debt ceiling and spending levels, which was only
ended thanks to a temporary solution that likely guarantees we’ll be having the
exact same fight again in early 2014. I just wanted to weigh in on a few things
that get lost in the shuffle on the fight over spending, some hard truths that
either people don’t understand or are willfully ignoring. Too often people just
say the soundbite “we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending
problem.” Unfortunately, that soundbite is wrong; we do have a revenue problem.
And until the folks in D.C. on both sides of the aisle (this is a problem
facing both Democrats and Republicans, and both parties aren't facing up to these facts) are willing to face that truth, nothing
is ever going to change.
What are we spending
our money on?
Yes, we currently have been operating without a budget in
Washington for some time now, because both sides cannot come to an agreement on
a long term budget. Instead, we get these piecemeal continuing resolutions that
agree to fund the government at a set amount for a short period of time. Right
now, that funding amount is at the levels set forth in the sequester, for a
budget on discretionary spending by the government of $988 billion, if the
budget were extended out to a twelve month period. What people don’t realize is
what that means. Discretionary spending is money the government is choosing to
spend, so that covers the following: our military, education, veterans’
benefits, health (the Centers for Disease Control & National Institute of
Health), the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency,
NASA, NOAA, and many more. This slice of our budget is approximately 30% of
what the government spends, and these were many of the services that were
halted by the government shutdown. But all the focus is on this 30% instead of
on the other 70% of where the government spending goes.
So what is the other 70%? 6% of it is paying the interest on
our national debt (currently ~17 trillion dollars), and the other 64% is on
mandatory spending programs. The lion’s share of that 64% is Social Security,
Medicare, and Medicaid, which combined are 87% of the mandatory spending. In
other words, about 55% of the total federal budget goes strictly to those three
programs. So, unless changes are made to those three programs, all the other
cuts in the world aren’t going to amount for squat, really.
Keep reading after the jump, there's more! --->
