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Top five spending categories: Pensions (Social Security) - $1221B, healthcare $990B, defense $829B, welfare $383B, and interest on the national debt $240B. And right now, Social Security runs in the red adding to the Federal deficit, and has done so since 2010.

Defense takes up ~20% of US Federal budget, paid out mostly directly to the military.
That's your tax dollars paying for soldiers, guns, tanks, missiles, ships, bases and for buying allies through foreign aid (a tiny piece of it all).
Veterans also represent a sizeable chunk of the whole thing, either through compensation paid out to them by the government, or through medical costs.
Again... your tax dollars are spent on all that.

"Medicare" takes up ~27% of US Federal budget BUT... and it's a HUGE BUT...
It is paid out from TRUST FUNDS, paid into by the workers, from their payroll and income taxes as INSURANCE for themselves and their families.
NOT your tax dollars - THEIR tax dollars, entrusted to the government, to be paid out TO THEM in the time of need.

I.e. That's people's savings for the rainy day.
Cause it rains on just and the unjust alike. And it never stops.
That's why government HANDLES that much cash - but it is NOT spent.
It is RETURNED to those who've provided it. With interest.

Same goes for social security, of which only a tiny chunk is actual spending instead of again - savings.

1. What BS. The us has been a creditor for a long time. In 1835 the full dept was payed off (only time ever). It lasted until 1836. If you care to see reality try this..
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

2. At least this one has some truth to it. He did increase the deficit in real terms.The rest of it is just religious blather. Half of people believe in personal responsibility. Half of the people believe in collectivist responsibility. Sign-up for your camp, I have yet to see conclusive evidence for either side.

3. Given that more than a quarter of chronic homeless are mentally ill I would say it is probably more the fault of getting rid of institutionalization. The push to get rid of institutionalization was from many places (of which Reagan was one). See this for real information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

4. Hmmm, looks like your conspiracy nut hat is showing. I would stick to policy and stop jumping at shadows if I was you. Oh, oh, I said shadows isn't that some code word for something else... I must be a racist...

4 (the second one).Hmmm, in a world without the US would the USSR have fallen as quickly... Probably not (they were doing well at the expand to acquire capacity plan for a while). In a world where Reagan wasn't pushing so hard would the USSR have fallen over as quickly... Probably not (It was probably military spending that helped push them over). Would they have fallen eventually? Yes, everything dies eventually.

As to how much money there was I find it hard to care that much. There is probably some waste that needs to be dealt with. That being said Defense spending as percent of GDP continues to go down. It looks like success to me.
http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

The food stamp program is $74 billion according to this story http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/...

According to http://www.reuters.com/article... the iraq war has cost roughly 2 Trillion. So the GP is correct.

Actually I found a better website http://www.usgovernmentspendin... If you add up the Pensions (which the lions share is SSA), Health (Medicare), and Welfare, You get a total spend of 2287.5 billion spent on social welfare programs.

Considering that our total 2015 budget was 3,650.5 billion, that means we spent 62% of our budget on welfare programs. If my math is correct.

Now look at military spending for 2015 and it is 820.2, smaller than either SSA, or Health spending. and only 22% of the budget. If my math is correct

To have a government like Finland or the Netherlands requires pretty left-wing policies and attitudes, including paying civil servants well, which requires a lot of tax money. If you keep insisting on low tax rates because we don't have a government type that doesn't arise unless one has somewhat higher tax rates, I'm not sure what to say.

Feds earn 74% more than people in the private sector.

The Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards compared data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to show that, in his view, civilian federal workers are overcompensated. Factoring both salary and benefits, Edwards pointed to BEA data showing the average federal employee earns about $119,000 annually, compared to the private sector worker who earns $67,000 per year. When comparing just salaries, feds collect 50 percent bigger paychecks, Edwards said.

Since the 1990s, federal workers have enjoyed faster compensation growth than private-sector workers.

More sources:
U.S. Office of Personnel Management: "Senior Executive Service Performance & Compensation"
Congressional Research Service: "The Federal Workforce: Characteristics and Trends"
Congressional Budget Office: "Comparing the Compensation of Federal and Private-Sector Employees".

Apparently our Government is starved for cash? Here's where we tax. Look at how it's spent.

Well if they refused to work your definition might be valid. Sadly these parents ALREADY HAVE JOBS DIPSTICK! In some cases multiple jobs. Your libertarian right-wing "I hate handouts" bit doesn't actually work in this case because it doesn't apply. It's not welfare, either, it's child welfare - it's helping the CHILDREN of those parents. Because those children will be cooking your next meal, stopping you at your next traffic stop, and saving you from your house fire next time you leave the stove on. Some of those children will even go to college, and could become politicians, making decisions affecting you.

I grew up in poverty, but I did what I could, and with some natural ability and some luck I've done pretty well for myself. Imagine how much more I could have done if I'd not had to worry about food, or heat growing up. Clothes. All of these things would have really helped my attention to school and not starving or freezing. These kids will have those opportunities, and SOCIETY AT LARGE will benefit from them. That's why we have public roads, public schooling, public funding for all sorts of things - it benefits EVERYONE.

So get off your libertarian "I hate poor people" stand. You're not held at gunpoint - none of YOUR money went into the CLEARLY LOCALLY FUNDED district. If you want to complain about someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to fund something, complain about the military that we have to fund 857 MILLION in "defense spending" when we are at peace with our only two neighbors - Canada and Mexico. But we only spend 393 million on welfare. Source: http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

The entire NIH budget is something like $35 billion.

In 2015 the US will Federal Government will spend:

• Health Care: $1,018.6 bln
• Military: $799.7 bln

You were saying?..

The outrage here is not that the tax-monies are spent on weapons — Constitution explicitly makes such appropriations the responsibility of the Federal Government. The outrage is that even a penny of tax-monies is spent on healthcare — which is decidedly not in the Constitution, and is best handled by the free markets.

Looks flat to me, rather than decreasing. Considering that unemployment lowered during the 80s as well, I'd say a flat level of expenditures on entitlements would be expected.

governments are necessary to ensure freedoms exist. who else would there be to ensure criminals don't deprive others of their freedoms? who else would there be to ensure contracts are enforced and not just useless words on paper? without courts, who would determine if people have been injured or mistreated and ensure justice for those people? these are roles that only the government can play, not corporations or for-profit organizations, or individuals on their own.

That's a nice list you put together — omitting only defense from the external enemies as a legitimate undertaking for any government. But why is the same government, which is supposed to be involved in the above-mentioned tasks, is also involved in providing healthcare, education, food and shelter and other "welfare"?

Now, of course, you did not mean to say, your list is exclusive, but I find it strange, that you listed the things, on which the government spends the smallest portions of its budget... One would expect a post like yours to put the biggest appropriations first...

I didn't single out corporations

Yes, you did — you are in full agreement with Dutchmaan as evidenced by your own talk of "complete control" and "gorging".

So, answer the question: are you challenging the assertion that corporations are in complete control and gorging themselves at the public trough?

This piece of rustic but still colorful rhetoric is too vague too agree or disagree with. Debating this is pointless — it will come down to trying to nail jellybeans like what constitutes "completeness" of control.

1) Obama would've gotten the vast majority of the black/poor (your cell video) vote without giving away cell phones

Not at all obvious. And, of course, it was not just the cell-phones — many people expected something: "free" healthcare, "free" college education, etcaetera. Those people "gorge themselves", as you put it, at the public trough and/or want to. That Obama got elected — despite being a junior senator (from a State famous for its corruption) without any notable accomplishment to his name — suggests rather strongly, it was that expectation of "spreading the wealth around" he promised, that helped him.

2) The cost of Obamaphones doesn't even qualify as a gnat's eyelash when compared the the largesse handed out to the corporations

Complete and utter bullshit. The single largest and dominating "hand out" given by the US government to KKKorporations (the proper spelling in the rants like yours, BTW) is for the military — planes, tanks, ships et al. It is big, but it is dwarfed by the costs of "War on Poverty", which costed the "public trough" more (inflation-adjusted), than all of the USA's real wars combined. Indeed, the much maligned Military-Industrial Complex, that Illiberals constantly complain about, constitutes "only" 13% of federal spending today less than education (14%) and healthcare (22%) (on which no tax monies should be spent at all). Now, which of these is a "gnat's eyelash"?

With both of your "clues" crumbled, I would not be surprised, if you claimed a sudden "lack of time" for debating me further. But let me answer your other questions, in case you decide to become a better human being by educating yourself quietly...

Why would I?

I don't know, why you would, but you did — by putting "confiscating the monies" into quotes.

Whatever term is your preference, government needs funds to operate.

Federal Income Tax did not exist in the US until 1913 — earlier attempts to introduce it were deemed unconstitutional by the courts. (My point here is not to question its constitutionality, but to show, how it is unnecessary.) Yes, I prefer the term "confiscate", because it is more to the point. "Collect" may apply to donations as well as willing purchases, whereas "confiscate" unmistakably refers to involuntary payments.

Yes, government needs to collect taxes, but their levels in today's Western world are outrageously high and a burden on our growth.

Let's hear it! (anarchy doesn't count)

Anarchy my behind — not forcing people to "help the poor" is not anarchy. What taxes would I approve of? Consider the following hypothetical scenario: a town facing an assault by barbarians... They need to organize fighting units, train, arm and feed them, and build fortifications — so they can confiscate money and food, disassemble wrought-iron fences to make pikes, melt church bells into cannon, conscript non-fighters into construction, and the like. In other words, taxation is justified, when the alternative is destruction and d

If you do not grant it to everyone than the entire machinery of checking and verification remains intact, removing one of the main arguments (the cost saving aspect).

Indeed. Though this site proposes only granting it to adults, though it does acknowledge that there are numerous options for children, including giving them a partial amount.

This is all basic math and publically accessible sources. How the fuck can you claim that "eliminating existing programs" will already give you 75% of the needed budget?

To be honest, I didn't phrase that all that well. The 75% figure is looking at where you get the money for people who will receive more money from the government than what they're taxed - IE people making less than ~$40k/year. I never proposed that a BIG be implemented without drastically overhauling our tax system.

Figure to meet: $2.1T, or at least 'close', given that I didn't say 75%, I said 'about 3/4'.
source.
Pensions: 1,247 B
welfare: 454B
Health Care, Welfare: 567 B
Total: 2.3T.
The rest is to be met through 'tax adjustments', like eliminating the lowest tax brackets, exemptions, and such.

You can have your basic income if you give up on military spending, healthcare spending, education spending, highways, the space program, etc. Or you can fund it through a massive money-printing program.

Or we could, you know, increase taxes such that the average person ends up pretty much as well off as they were before, with the increased taxes being neutralized(or neutralizing, depending on your view) their BIG payments. Difference being, if they get laid off they don't need to apply for anything like unemployment- the BIG is already there.

But wait, you have "forgotten about inflation", so that's not a concern. Inflation is not real. Giving everybody free cash has no consequences in the real world.

Man, you just have your rage on, don't you. I mean, you edited out the 'almost' in here, so have you worked out your aggression on the straw man yet? This wasn't a claim that inflation isn't real, it was a statement about it having been really low for a good while.

Drug addicts do not get any cheaper when you give them money either. They will just use it to buy more drugs instead of shelter, food, etc., and then _still_ require society to pay for their non-drug needs.

You really have no clue about my desired policies, do you? And the surprising thing is - just giving them money, counter-intuitively, actually DOES WORK. Eventually. For some. At least as well as the other policies work. :(

On the other hand, massively reforming our 'war on drugs' will help here a lot more.

As for the Canada program: it was not funded by the town itself, but required external funding, and the program has since been stopped. If it were truly such a massive success, don't you think it would instead have spread throughout the country?

You clearly didn't read into it more. It was stopped and funding yanked without ever having analyzed the data. It wasn't until like 20 years later that there was enough interest and funding that they went through the collected documentation and put together the information to determine the results.

It's only now working it's way up the policy ladders - there's a huge amount of inertia for something like this, it is radical after all.

You see, the problem isn't that I haven't put '5 minutes' into this, I've put far longer in, so I actually know the details behind the examples you blindly toss out.

Ummm... sequestration did not work...

I guess that depends on how you define "work". Based on 30 seconds of Googling, total federal spending has been more or less flat since FY 2009 so something worked. Maybe budgeting by continuing resolution isn't all that bad. Sequestration certainly had a role in halting the increases, as did divided government (yay gridlock!). Interestingly, it looks like both defense and welfare spending peaked in 2011 and have dropped since then.

I'm getting my data from here, YMMV.

Convenient when your chart cuts off at 2007 when military spending peaked again in 2010 to similar levels that we saw in the 80's
http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

I suppose that I could fall into the mud with you and trade insults, but I am satisfied that it would provide little entertainment and prove me to be no less correct than I am now

Have a nice evening cold, it is always fun exchanging ideas with you

Yeah, this graph is bad, and you should feel bad. Defense spending as a percent of GDP is a useless metric. Switch the graph to display in
$Billion Nominal.

The graph still is bad because it doesn't compensate for inflation.

Yes indeed, that is a mightly "blip" there.

Defense Spending Since WWII

Not sure why you bothered with those charts.

You think you've been proven correct? I'm pretty sure that hasn't happened, quite the opposite. The issue here isn't you not "falling into the mud" but rather avoiding the nitty gritty.

Thanks gary, good night.

Convenient when your chart cuts off at 2007 when military spending peaked again in 2010 to similar levels that we saw in the 80's
http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

I suppose that I could fall into the mud with you and trade insults, but I am satisfied that it would provide little entertainment and prove me to be no less correct than I am now

Have a nice evening cold, it is always fun exchanging ideas with you

Greece was borrowing money to pay back formerly borrowed money. The U.S. is still borrowing money to do things with it (hopefully productive things).

US Budget Deficit 2014: $483 billion
US interest paid on debt 2014: $430 billion

So last year, 89% of our borrowing was to pay interest on our existing debt. That's not quite as bad as Greece. They topped 100% during the worst period. But to say that we are doing productive things with it is clearly incorrect. We are doing things like subsidizing health care that won't give us long term returns. Or paying for military operations (if you like subsidized healthcare). You might be able to find $53 billion in investment in the budget, but this is the wrong time to be financing it.

The truth is that at this point in our business cycle, we should have a balanced budget (perhaps even a surplus). So that the next time the cycle goes sour, we can afford to borrow and take advantage of cheap constructions costs, etc.

And this ignores the real problem. Current total debt (both internal and external) is now higher than current GDP. This means that even if we devoted our entire economy to paying the debt, we couldn't. This will cause problems when our internal debt finance (mostly Social Security and Medicare) turns negative again. I.e. when we have to pay out more in Social Security payments than we receive in taxes. Currently they make it look like the government is more solvent than it is (about $700 billion last year).

This is budget chicanery that will eventually end. When the baby boomers finish retiring (they started in 2008 and will be generally gone by the 2030s), we lose all their tax payments and have to pay out to them. No more Social Security and Medicare surpluses will mean that the entire trillion dollar deficit will be exposed.

Source: http://www.usgovernmentspendin...
Source: https://www.treasurydirect.gov...

The problem is, when you look at local taxes, there's actually a LOT of money in education.

http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

It's right there behind health care and pensions, both of which we've seen being raided by the politicians in the past few administrations.

Considering the Democrats aren't all that much better recently, I don't know what you are spouting off about.

Heck, I'm trying to find this $300m deficit, it looks like that didn't exist under Clinton, and was already gone by the time Bush took office:

http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

2001 should be counted under Clinton, and 2009 under Bush as it was their budgets. If you look, Bush had 1 year over a trillion, Obama had 3 years. The GDP is also handily there, and goes up the entire time except in 2009, which was the real estate crash, which was brought on by Clinton and the repeal of Glass Steagall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

It seems that the Democrats have been pretty bad recently, but I just don't see the Republicans doing so bad. Deficit spending is considered a good thing usually, as the growth of the economy causes deflation which means the money is worth more now than later on. However, the national debt growth under Obama has been pretty drastic.

It should be illegal to spoof caller ID. It's fraud.

Fraud is already illegal. Perhaps we should enforce that.

Sorry, enforcing that got defunded because big government is evil.

Wrong.

Fraud enforcement got defunded because that evil big government has decided to stay in power by handing out Obamaphones to bribe low-information voters into keeping the people in power.

Entitlement spending makes up at least half US government expenditures, and almost 1/8th of the entire US economy..

And that's why we can't afford to go after Dish Network for breaking the law.

Or even keep our roads and bridges in good repair.

In 2014, US Federal, State, and Local governments spent 35.5% of GDP. Compare with 31.6% of GDP in 2000.

In 2014, US Federal, State, and Local governments spent 35.5% of GDP. Compare with 31.6% of GDP in 2000.

Those aren't your tax dollars. Our country spends twice what it takes in.

According to this Conservative-run Federal budget reference website the current Federal budget deficit is $483 billion on a $3504 billion dollar budget, or 13.8%. That is a far cry for "twice what it takes in". Smart to remain anonymous, you would not want to reveal your math skills to those who know you.

That notorious Marxist rag The Wall Street Journal concurs.

you also have an annual deficit of $564 bn

Your whole insistence of spending more than you take in tax is the reason the economy has had trouble recovering - mainly as when Bush left office the deficit was $1.3tn. Those election promises didn't come cheap!

The government spends 13.68% of all income across the country on welfare alone.

Total 2014 per-capita spending on welfare, all sources, in the United States is $1538.40

Total 2013 per-capita income in the United States is $53,960 (Google, including World Bank)

$1538.40/$53,960 = 2.85%

You forgot a simple head tax. One head tax based on your place of residence (or split among localities if you have more than one residence over the tax period based on time spent at each). There'd be one of these for city, county, state, and federal paid once a year.

Have you run the numbers on this?

US government spending, per capita, is $12,101, so the canonical family of four would start off owing $48,400. Roughly half of the population would pay more in taxes than they earn.

Which, aside from value judgments, is going to make it necessary to increase the tax rate since those "takers" won't be paying much. Of course, increasing the tax rate will put more of them in the street, etc.

Given the ever growing taxes in various countries (US included) I find it harder and harder to blame tax-evaders....

The overall US tax burden (all taxes, all levels of government), as a fraction of the GDP has shown no growth over the last 33 years. It has been 35% of the GDP, with ups and downs, but oscillating around this fixed line.

Sorry, but no matter how many times you repeat the "ever growing taxes" lie, it does not become true.

The military is the biggest part of the US budget? Gee.... our government disagrees with that, according to the budget they publish.

http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

Total defense spending, 22%. Pensions, 25%. Healthcare 27%.

And this does NOT include Social Security or Medicare (separate funds, they keep telling us).

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com is not something that the US government publishes.
The about page lists the owner/author as the same person who blogs here: http://www.roadtothemiddleclass.com/ Which appears to be a very conservative/libertarian type blog.

(I don't feel like typing out a long detailed explanation of the budget, or finding one to copy paste...again... but just to point out 1 thing that may not be obvious to people: 22% defense spending is not taking into account the actual cost of the military. One example: it does not include the VA Healthcare System... which is kinda large....add up all the stuff that keeps our military ticking, and the number is much larger than 22%)

The military is the biggest part of the US budget? Gee.... our government disagrees with that, according to the budget they publish.

http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

Total defense spending, 22%. Pensions, 25%. Healthcare 27%.

And this does NOT include Social Security or Medicare (separate funds, they keep telling us).

Here is a chart on historical spending vs GDP (scroll down to "Education Spending by Education Type").

http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

Of course, since 2007 schools were hit by the housing crisis. Most of their money comes from the state and a lot came from property tax. Probably some school bought into the hype at the time and had purchased new property and build new expensive to heat buildings. They hired new staff because they were flush with cash at the height of the bubble.

Then everything feel apart. Conservatives have always hated teachers because they are unionized so they blamed teacher pay on the crisis. Plus teachers don't even work in the summer. But the teachers' union is powerful and faught them.

That's how you get beg-a-thons. It helps please the conservatives because it makes them think the problem is solved and they can go back to ignoring teachers. Teachers like them. Corporations like them. Politicians like them.

you're splitting pennies for one of the essential functions of human existence: teachers to our young...

however we just pass MILLIONS$$$ and BILLIONS$$$ around when discussing business executive pay or defense contracts

Nobody is "splitting pennies", you think they should be paid more so he's asking how much they should be paid, very simple. And you can stop crying poor in comparison to defense spending, the US spends more on Education annually than it does on defense, in excess of $1 trillion in fact.

What I can't put my finger on is exactly when this behavior and conflict of interest in general because fine. It's rife throughout government. We see it in a big way in the SCOTUS, and the state governments are even worse than the federal government. But *NO ONE* seems to care. This wasn't the same in the 70s and 80s, or perhaps it was and the difference is that these idiots aren't even embarrassed by it any more.

What changed? The size of the federal government.

Federal, State, Local Spending in 20th Century

At the start of the 20th century, government spending was principally local government spending. Out of a total of 7 percent of GDP, a full 4 percent was spent at the local level. Federal spending spiked in World War I, but in the 1920s, local government still represented about half of all government spending. In the 1930s this changed, and federal spending surged to about half of all government spending. After the spike of World War II the federal share increased again and state government spending also began to increase as a percent of GDP, so that by the 2010s federal spending checked in at over 20 percent of GDP, state spending amounted to 8 to 9 percent of GDP and local spending exceeded 10 percent of GDP.

Spending equals power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So why the hell do people think we can solve our problems by giving this government MORE power?

Giving this out-of-control power-mad government more money and more power will make things BETTER? For WHO?

That's one way to skew it. But this is flatly oversimplified, I'm surprised intelligent people take this for reality, that people x or y are simply good or evil, as if this is an epic fantasy story. The truth lies in the middle, as usual. Republicans may tend to be less than empathetic about people down on their luck, but not entirely. Unemployment benefits have been extended how many times now? How many people in this country are using food stamps now? It's a disturbing trend. You're not doing people any favors with endless handouts.

One could argue that it's exactly the same way that Democrats/liberals frame and abuse the term "compassion" to get people to vote for more spending and taxing, presumably on social programs, portraying ever more and larger groups as victimized and utterly helpless, when a good deal of that targeted tax income goes into government bloat. Taking into account the fact that the country is already $16 trillion in debt; yet 29% of the budget was spent on welfare and health in 2013. (Military was 13%) this hardly smacks of incompassion, except maybe to future generations who have to incur this debt. The irony is, the more taxes go up, and Democrats know this, it's the middle class that suffers, which in turn makes more of them fall into that lower class needing help; the cycle continues and results in more money and power to the government, and more dependence by the people. The middle class is stuck in the middle.
If Republicans pander to the rich, then Democrats pander to people who believe they will "get something" from the government, whether compassionately justifiable or not, in order to secure more votes. How ironic is it then that more Democrats in congress are millionaires than Republicans?

To reiterate my first paragraph, I don't believe all democratic politicians are like this. But many are.Same with republicans, they're not all old evil white men. But some are. Absolutely some people need assistance. Shit happens.
But if you think the system isn't rife with abuse and waste, and couldn't use some trimming, you're kidding yourself. Every government program is, including the military. It's a game to both parties.

Have you even looked at the budget breakdown? Pensions are the #1 expense. Instead of 40 years in the military we're probably closer to the point where people's retirements are longer than their actual years of service. You only need 20 years of service in order to retire younger than 62. The average retirement age of a federal employee is 60 but what if someone retires in their 50's or even 40's and then ends up living into their 90s? The results can be fairly extreme. http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

1. Because Government is a Big Business (about 40% of the GDP) and,
2. The Military Industrial Complex is a large portion of that (particulars unimportant for now) and
3. The MIC arguably does deal in quite a bit of classified paper ("We have top men looking into that....") and, most important
4. When you have the only tool you know how to use is a Top Secret stamp, everything looks like a Classified Document.

http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

Literally the first link when I typed in "percentage of US budget welfare" into google.

I just showed you how to use the internet.

The above is common knowledge. You just asked if the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

Yes. Yes it does.

Read the pie:

http://www.usgovernmentspendin...

If you call "Healthcare" social welfare spending, you probably should also call "Pensions" military spending (who is getting these pensions?)

13% of the federal budget is defense. 4.88% GDP predicted in 2014.

Money allocated to space research is 17 billion, like 0.1% GDP, so defense costs about 50x as much.

I got the numbers here

Looking at the bigger picture, deficit spending is still higher than pre-2008, and those 3-years you're comparing to were not typical due to things like TARP. Spending is continuing to balloon, yes the deficit is still projected to hover in the 0.8 trillion/year range.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/download_multi_year_1960_2018USb_15s2li101mcn_G0f

Continuing to run up the credit card, paying only interest is a sure-fire way to bankrupt the household.

BUt of course we knew this: government spending is almost 40% of GDP.

A little high, but if you look at the chart you will notice that it is also right around the same percentage as under that flaming liberal Ronald Reagan.

Massive government cuts are what drag economies down.

Then why did the US not implode after government spending was cut in half after WWII (between 1945 and 1948)?

Total government spending in the US went up from 1922-1940, yet there was that whole Great Depression thing.

Massive government cuts are what drag economies down.

Then why did the US not implode after government spending was cut in half after WWII (between 1945 and 1948)?

Total government spending in the US went up from 1922-1940, yet there was that whole Great Depression thing.

A CR is not a budget, plain and simple.

As for the Democrat's Budget summary, the third bullet point is $100 billion added to the deficit. Brilliant. All while it discusses reducing the deficit, while mentioning the debt as an aside. The deficit is not the debt. The summary does not mention a single item that would actually reduce the debt, which means that they do not even believe that they will eliminate the deficit, therefore making the entire budget moot and disingenuous (not surprising). It's this arrogant, mindless, out of control spending that has lead us to the debt ceiling once again. To be clear, there

From the Senate Budget "Plan":

The Senate Budget tackles our deficit and debt the way the American people have told us they want it done: with a balanced mix of responsible spending cuts and new revenue from the wealthiest Americans
and biggest corporations.

Yep, most people want tax increases. Keep on growing that government because it's unreasonable to think otherwise!

Invests in longterm economic growth and national competitiveness by tackling our serious deficits in
infrastructure, education, job training, and innovation to create jobs now and lay down a strong
foundation for broadbased growth.

Tackling our serious deficits in ... AKA: spending increases. It's a calculated use of "deficit" to mislead readers into thinking it's fixing the deficit somehow. In reality, it's saying that we are not spending enough on these items (ignoring the fact that we have spent just under five times more in normalized, 2005 dollars on education alone since 1980, without even checking the other pieces).

Includes a $100 billion targeted jobs and infrastructure package that would start creating new jobs
quickly, begin repairing the worst of our crumbling roads and bridges, and help train our workers to
fill 21st century jobs. This jobs investment package is fully paid for by eliminating loopholes and
cutting wasteful spending in the tax code that benefits the wealthiest Americans and biggest
corporations.

Immediately follows from the previous quoted point, and it really drives that bullet point home. But, they're fixing the deficit "and debt"!

It also includes false savings from Health Care that are already not happening. The sheer size of the bill, which was passed so that we could see what was in it, makes it impossible for it to A) be implemented as intended, B) be implemented without the weight of another unwieldy, government bureaucracy, and C) to actually lower costs for people.

The saddest reality of the ACA is that it does nothing to address the problems that actually cause costs to rise in the first place. There is little-to-no increased competition, and there was no legal reform to reduce the windfall losses that require insurance companies to stockpile cash.

I'm sorry but that's NOT how things are supposed to be done and it certainly shows no willingness to compromise.

You mean, literally and exactly like the Democrats are doing, and exactly how ACA was passed in the first place?

I can only hope that you have not actually read the ACA, and I certainly hope that you have never read anything more than the misleading-at-best summary provided for the Democrat's Budget.

Who will give my money to people who don't work?

Are you really so obsessed about the tiny percentage going to humanitarian programs? The vast majority of your taxes goes to the military, and the (distant) second largest chunk goes to the retired. I think we can probably stand to cut military spending a percentage or two before we chuck your mother or grandparents out on the street, don't you?

I usually ignore ACs, but in this case your lie really needs correcting. Tied for first place is pensions (Social Security) and health (Medicare); defense is 3rd place.

Man, look at that gutted budget: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total_spending_chart

• $ __2.6 billion -- US climate research proposal 2013 (source)
• $ 856.5 billion -- US defense spending 2013 (source)

So, you could make the enormous climate research spending budget-neutral, by reducing the military spending by 0.3 %. Or, if you slash the military budget by a staggering 0.6%, you could spend that money on climate research *AND* on subsidizing better house insulation for poor people, because what you say is actually a really good plan, like they do in the UK. (Woops.. they planned to do in the UK; Cameron shot his coalition partner's plan down apparently

Any comment?

" Perhaps it was not broken in the first place."

Yes, it has been broken for quite some time. It is a hard problem to solve, since the population is roughly "everyone from 6 to 18 years old" regardless of their home environment, socioeconomic status, genetics, and community. There is not one general solution that works for everyone, and what works one place may be a failure elsewhere for a number of reasons. Fixing it will take lots of trial and error.

I'm not sure what your problem is with smaller class sizes. About 3.8 million teachers at $50k average (according to census.gov and the BLS for 2011), with about 6 percent coming back as federal taxes (the lower than average probably don't pay much back at all, or it would be closer to 10). 55.5 million grade school students. That averages 14 kids per teacher (quoted as pupil/teacher ratio, 15.1 for 2013 on http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372) , but only if teachers get no planning periods. A rough estimate of reality would be closer to 19 in each class.

That comes from state money mostly, with a combined state and local budget of $3,233.6 billion, the $211 billion in teacher salary was 6.5% of the spending total. Getting enough teachers for 15 student classrooms would probably need 825 million teachers, adding another 1.625% of spending. This is a problem for you because... teacher's unions? Is 1.6 percent really going to break the bank?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/state_spend_gdp_population

I see people have eviscerated the remainder of your lunacy. New math was tried and then backed off, "smart" classrooms are not mainstream (unless you mean just having computers), and the rest of what you say just makes you sound like an ignorant crazy person.

Spending at all levels of government for education is 0.9 trillion dollars. Coincidentally, the expenditure for defense is also 0.9 trillion dollars. The 5% shift you propose is negligible and would do more harm than good - to both institutions. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

That you think 5% would amount to a 100X change shows that you are within the education establishment's reality distortion field.

If you want to go fishing for corruption, why not go look in more obvious place like where 24% of the budget gets spent? That would be a much better payoff if you want to clean up corrupt funding. Otherwise, I would file this under "because, space geeks" and stop spending money on the witch hunt.

[*] http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_actual

Wait. What?

Cite source?

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/states/uschartsat.html
http://www.publicagendaarchives.org/charts/state-state-sat-and-act-scores ...But even using your source, change it to "Utah is in the top 20, California is in the bottom 20".

And I really don't care about cultural bias because college admissions boards don't really care about cultural bias, they care about SAT scores.

And to get a reasonable picture, you should compare spending per capita by state:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/compare_state_spending_2013b20s

California spends more than 7 times what Utah spends, and gets a poorer result.

But if you don't like Utah because you don't like mormons, pick another state higher up in the second table, and compare it to California; California is only going to look worse.

If you look at the totals in the right column, they aren't that different - the defense budget is roughly about 110% of education spending. (Assuming the numbers are correct.)

There seems to be a lot of zeros in both numbers. I'll bet I know what confused you - you only looked at the federal spending and most defense spending is federal, most education spending is local and state. But totals? Not that different.

Education $781.2 billion
Defense $857.7 billion

I'll note two things. First, the defense totals are only that high since they lump in things like veterans programs into it whereas it is a separate agency that contributes nothing to current operations. It is debatable but reasonable point.

Second, it isn't clear that more money for education will necessarily produce a better outcome.

Does Spending More on Education Improve Academic Achievement?

While you are on that page you also might as well note the totals spent on pensions and health care compared to the military budget.