July 07, 2010

Liberal Myth: Defense is Biggest in Federal Budget

I get so tired of hearing this.  Here is a chart I whipped up using a table I got from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/hist03z2.xls.

I left out the Housing and Finance line items along with the post office because I could not make heads or tails out of that, serious book cooking going on there apparently.  Everything else looks extremely straightforward on this table.

Comparing 2008 (the last year of the Evil Bush, surely a year in which the warmongering Bush would have let little old ladies and children die to fund his thirst for blood) to the estimated 2010 final numbers; here is how it breaks down in Millions:

2008-2010 fed budget

Social security edges out National defense for the last four years (actually going all the way back to 1993)  But that is not the whole story. 

Total Categories Fed Budget 08 to 10

Once you add all the Health and Human services budgets up, and even throwing the VA in with the Defense Budget here is how they stack up.  HHS is Social Security, Income Security, Medicare, Health, Education, Training, Employment and other Social Services.  Defense is National Defense and Veterans Benefits.  All other is Transportation, Administration of Justice, International Affairs, Natural Resource and Environment, General Science and Space Technology, Government, Community and Regional Development, Agriculture, and Energy.

So not only is our HHS outlay about three times that of our Defense Budget, but as the chart clearly shows all spending has went up appreciably since 2008, even defense. 

There is just no way to get around that…as long as you believe Whitehouse.gov numbers.  Which I don’t.  I am willing to bet it is much more money, and skewed much farther towards ‘benefits’

-KOOK

Comments (11)

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I love it Kook. You used pictures that even a lib could understand! Another factor: End the wars and the spending stops. End social security, and we still have trillions in unfunded liabilities. Social spending indebtedness on paper is just the tip of the iceberg.
Mr S is right. Just about everyone under 40 knows Social Security will have dried up by the time they are old enough to be eligible. In 10 years, we will be forced to take up the same "austerity" measures that the European Union a.k.a the "4th Reich" is now being forced to utilize. If we do so now by announcing the phasing out of social security for those under 40, we can avoid the Greek riots currently happening in Europe.
If you press them, they usually say "largest single item"-- which is sort of accurate, except that they roll anything vaguely military into one item.

Or they do something like this bit of fraud, where they put everything on the military they could manage, added their estimates of the current conflicts, added in 80% of the service on the national debt and removed "trust funds" from the figure. The only definition they offer of "trusts" is social security-- so that's a fifth of the nation's spending removed from their consideration.
7 replies · active 768 weeks ago
Of course, 80% of our actual military DEFENSE budget goes to defending countries other than us. Meanwhile we give away food to those same countries and allow them to rack up debt on us at the same time. Why don't we discuss taking the giveaways off the table for the rest of the world BEFORE we do so to our elderly and soldiers. Let's call this notion OUR "austerity measure".
I support defending our allies, and those that give us strategic advantage, but I would rather like to remove all cash support from the table.... (food is a bit harder to get into one's swiss bank account, even though it's entirely possible; training is expensive, but it pays off eventually, if you can keep the folks you're training alive)

I'd much rather we stop funding things like the UN (other than our membership dues) and the ISS. (As much as I hate to say it, card carrying geek that I am)
If folks want to think of us as "just another country," they can do so on their own dime.

Of course, I'd also like to cut spending in country by cutting the number of mandatory regulatory hoops one must go through for most anything, so I may as well throw a pony on top of it all while we're wishing.
I am not out to stop feeding the world or defending our allies. I only want our supposed debt paid for by our doing so. We "donate" billions of dollars worth of food, financial aid, etc. to folks like Yemen, Hamas, Greece, Turkey, MEXICO, Venezuela etc.. Are they really our allies? I say no, although our supposed representative government seems to feel differently.
Yeah, the Hamas thing really bugs me....
So it should really bother you, as it does me that we are going broke feeding them, our soldiers are facing both pay cuts and death trying to "nation build" for them, and at the same time, promises made to our grandparents and opportunities for our grandchildren should come off the table before their free ride.
We're not facing pay cuts. Smaller increases, yes, and they're shifting most of the increases to "family support" type stuff, but not cuts to pay. Cuts to equipment R&D prior-commitments, but not pay. (Thankfully, the response to the "make soldiers pay for injuries they received at war" thing backfired fast enough to be totally dropped.)

Watching the debt roll up while we give away money, spend far too much on "research," waste money to try to make the nation accident free?

Bugs the heck out of me.
Same here. I used the term "cuts" in the same sarcastic way as union thugs and corrupt government scumbags use for smaller increases in their money printing scam-of course, those "cuts" never seem to materialize, but everyone elses' do.
Good comments. I think I missed most of these when the iPhone was on the fritz

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