The talk in official Washington about the federal budget, the need for spending reform and the imperative to avoid a debt default is still going on. Muted and unfocused, to be sure. But there's talk about what to do.
Which is fine. But let's add some context to these muted, unfocused and as yet unserious discussions over how Uncle Sam spends your money (and borrows the rest). The Cato Institute's Romina Boccia has put together a handy list of the federal government's major spending priorities in the most recent budget for 2022.
Boccia writes that the feds:
…spent $6.3 trillion in 2022. Tax dollars paid for $4.9 trillion or 78 percent. The rest (22 percent) was borrowed. Borrowing is deferred taxation, so ultimately deficit spending too will be paid for by taxes.
How was that money spent? At the top of the list are programs neither major party wants to touch:
Major entitlements—Medicare, Medicaid, other health care, and Social Security—devoured nearly half of the 2022 budget, consuming 46 percent of all spending. ($2.9 trillion)
Next up, more transfer payments:
Other federal transfer programs consumed another 18 percent. “Income security” and other benefits include federal employee retirement and disability, veterans' benefits, unemployment benefits, and welfare programs such as food and housing aid.
Overall, two‐thirds of government spending in 2022 went to pay some sort of benefit to someone. And that's before accounting for student loan forgiveness. [emphasis added]
That's another way of saying that two-thirds of federal spending support a complex web of entitlements and transfers…what might just as easily be called the American Welfare state.
Right behind all that taking money from Taxpayer A and giving it to Citizen B is the line item that will only get bigger over time:
Interest on the U.S. federal debt consumed 8 percent of the budget. ($476 billion)
All of it leads to a costly, and barring an outbreak of fiscal realism and political courage, an unavoidable end:
Deficits today represent tax increases tomorrow. So, if you thought your taxes were too high and burdensome this year, I have bad news for you. Without reducing the growth in Medicare and Social Security benefits, Congress will have no choice but to raise taxes on most Americans at some point in the future.
Which makes the current bipartisan decision to see, hear and speak no political evil about entitlements all the more shameful.
Because the bill comes due. Always.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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To be fair Rand Paul has presented a program to balance the budget with only a 1% cut of programs over a period of time. Republicans could support it but it would do no good as Democrats per Pelosi adamantly Refuse to stop all the spending ! Republicans can not get a program passed because Democrats refuse to vote to do that !!! Until VOTERS put enough of a majority of Republicans in control this will not get resolved.
Perhaps if the greedy s.o.b.’s had left socical security in its own fund instead of moving it in to the general fund so they would have more money to play with and waste. As for entitlements as I recall there was a ss tax taken out of my check every two weeks to pay into my again let me say that MY ss account, you know the one associated with each and every U.S. citizens social security number. No entitlement there bud, it is my money that I paid into my account. If our elustrest president and his ilk had not wanted more spending money for what ever pet cockamaine idea they had might not be a problem. It really is simple math if lefr in its own fund it is self supporting most people that work and pay in to the fund, and a certain percentage of those people don’t make it to retirement age so you end up with a surplus. But no less put it in to the general fund so we can mix it all together so we can’t tell what is what. And then we can come up with in example, the let’s save a dumb ass fund because little Jonny or Jenny is a dumb ass and got a major in underwater basket weaving and a minor in ancient wemon’s study’s and now can’t find a job golly gosh gee maybe we should pay of their student loans or we’ll the tax payers can. Perhaps it would be money well spent to send the poor little ones to a class called WELCOM TO THE REAL WORD, dumb ass. If these brainneacts are the leaders of tomorrow God help us we are in a world of hurt.
You used the term “taking money from Taxpayer A and giving it to Citizen B” to describe Social Security. I recall almost as much of my paychecks going to FICA as to regular tax. Now, FDR may have set up the program in such a way that I was donating all of that money to my parents’ generation, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a right to something in return for that very large donation. Just because the politicians have been dipping into that “lockbox” for decades, don’t view me as a receiver of government largesse.