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http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2013USbn_14bs1n_3036508031#usgs302

Looks like defense is ahead of education. That defense budget seems a little suspicious too. Lots of zeros. And does it include funding the wars?

Ban xem chi tiet tai day nhe tri mun

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2013USbn_14bs1n_3036508031#usgs302

Looks like defense is ahead of education. That defense budget seems a little suspicious too. Lots of zeros. And does it include funding the wars?

the DOD piece of the pie is being cut--severely. 40%,

Got a citation for that? I looked it up here, and I'm not seeing any change from 2012 to 2013, let alone a 40% cut.

-jcr

Not anything that's available to the public. It was from a VTC from PACAF comptroller.

Simple math, though. Congress says "cut your 2013 budget" after half of 2013 budget is spent. 10% cut automatically becomes 20% cut from 2nd half of the year.

Then, congress says "contracts, personnel, and programs A through X are off limits for cuts". So, the only thing that can realistically be cut is comes from the training budget, which is about half the total budget.

So it ends up being a 40% cut to the stuff that matters, while many things that SHOULD be cut, are not allowed by congress.

the DOD piece of the pie is being cut--severely. 40%,

Got a citation for that? I looked it up here, and I'm not seeing any change from 2012 to 2013, let alone a 40% cut.

-jcr

Could be worse. These "best and brightest" could have been elected and run amok. Oh, wait, that was 2008. ;)

No seriously though, one man's "bring the government to its knees" is another's "bring spending back in line with sane levels more similar to (population-adjusted) 2007 levels instead of keeping it at 50% above that forever with all the implications that will have on our debt and/or tax levels and economic growth". I suppose it must be nice to be able dismiss all your political opponents with caricatures of their views, though I'm idly wondering whether making that decision instead of going for intellectual honesty is itself consistent with the brain scan differences reported in this article :)

Interestring then that the numbers are far higher than you state, and are directly enacted by those voted out in 2008 (They took office in 2009, and inherited the mess those leaving in 2008 and before left behind)

Now, is it fair to say that the new crop hasn't done enough to rein in spending? Yes, probably. What's one of the major "debt" causes though? That whole prescription medicare law, passed in 2003 by the GOP listed as bigger debt (deficit) driver than even ObamaCare?.

So, let's start lowering our deficit, start with the unfunded Medicare plan. Once you remove that, we can start on other problem areas. Oh, you'll have to increase taxes too, to at least 2000 levels (pre-bubble) just to even the playing field. I just would like to be there when you tell your elders.

It isn't welfare, Medicare, military spending. It is all these little small waste of money projects that add up.

You just took welfare (12%), Medicare (13%) and Defense (25%) off the table http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_budget_2012_4.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_federal_budget Good luck finding enough unneeded paper clips to eliminate from the budget when you've declared half off limits already.

As well paying for inefficient policies in the government, which are harder to track down.

Have you worked with humans before? I've worked for and in lots of large companies and I can assure you that we do things inefficiently. I have yet to see a compelling argument that Government (with all its failures and inefficiencies) is any less efficient than the private sector. Think about Worldcom, Countrywide mortgage, Enron, AIG, pets.com... Besides, after decades of Government that has been focused on cutting down on "waste, fraud, and abuse" surely we've got at most of the easy stuff.

OMFG. "Obama Stopped Two Wars"

You have to be fucking joking or retarded.

Iraq: Iraq ended because the Iraqi government refused to extend the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which was set to expire in December 2011 (date ring a bell?). Obama tried in the time period before SOFA expired to get the Iraqis to extend it. That was politically impossible for the Iraqi government partly as a result of war crimes confirmed by the information Bradley Manning released through Wikileaks. That's who you should thank for ending Iraq because if Obama had had his way, we'd still be there. But when Democrats get a hold of the FACT that what Obama did was fail to extend the war, they say "Iraq over: Check!" As if Obama is some peacenik. By that same logic, you should be lauding as a hero any person who intends to shoot a bunch of people on campus, but gets arrested before he can go on a rampage. Obviously, the guy is a humanitarian -- look at how many people he saved by failing to do what he wanted to. THAT is exactly the logic used to commend Obama on the end of the Iraq war.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/obama-iraq_n_1032507.html
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/

As for the second war -- which was that? Afghanistan is still going (and remember, Obama tripled the troops there, GWB's max was about 35k, we're still at around 65K troops, so still almost double) and Libya is spilling over into Mali. Of course Libya is a thing in itself -- even GWB had congressional approval for the Iraq debacle, but Libya was prosecuted without that token congressional acknowledgment required by the War Powers Act (a law designed in the post Viet Nam error to prevent future Viet Nams) because our constitution says that wars are not declared by the president, but by congress. So next time we have a Dick Cheney type in the office and he decides he's going to war with anyone and everyone, Congress be damned, remember to send Obama a "thank you" note.

And how is that even after Iraq ended, Obama can't figure out how to spend less on the offense budget than GWB did in his worst (i.e., highest spending) year?

offense spending (Trillions)
2007: 0.7T
2008: 0.7T
2009: 0.8T
2010: 0.8T
2011: 0.9T
2012: 0.9T
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown_2012USrt_13rs5n

Obama is up 200 billion over GWB in military spending and he cries big sad tears about the sequester which is what, 80B? Even if the entire sequester came out of the military budget, we'd still be paying 120B more than we were when the Iraq war that Obama failed to extend, was hot.

Wise up and quit being an apologist for the worst president ever -- which is an amazing feat considering the depths GWB plumbed.

We are running a $1.6Trillion deficit per year right now and have been during the current administration. If you cut defense out completely we would have a $900 billion deficit PER YEAR!

Ummm, no, We are currently running about $1.0 Trillion, and that number will drop a bit as the economy recovers and tax revenue increases. Take 400 Billion out of the defense budget, and fix the tax loopholes that allow companies like Google and Microsoft to pay less than 5% taxes, and you will have closed almost the entire deficit. Moreover, as the economy recovers more, the remaining deficit will turn into a surplus that we can use to pay down some of the massive debt we racked up in the last decade. If you really want to go for the perfect game, jump the taxes on anyone making over $5 Mil back to 75%, and we won't have any more budget problems.

-=Geoskd

Actually, government spending as a percent of GDP has gone down since 2009. See this chart for more information.

Much of the deficit increase in 2009 was due to existing "safety net" programs such as food stamps and unemployment insurance that kicked in in response to the depression, which was already underway when Obama took office. The rest was due to the financial bailout, in which Obama followed through on the bailout devised under the Bush administration. Obama brought an end to the growth in Federal spending

Ah, Krugman. Love that graph - on log scale! The absolute numbers are considerably different. Spending increased over the entire Bush Administration by about $900 billion; spending is up over $820 billion in just the first Obama term.

Assuming President Obama can restrain spending to just the rate of inflation (which would be a huge scale-back of his planned spending increases), he'd still end up close to twice the spending of President Bush, over his two terms.

Misremembered the citation - Bush grew federal spending by more than twice what Obama has, not the deficit. My apologies. Here's the citation: http://www.businessinsider.com/whos-responsible-for-budget-deficit-2012-8

Not quite... The facts are rather different. President Bush took Federal spending from $2.01 trillion to $2.98 trillion, a growth of $970 billion.

President Obama took spending from that $2.98 trillion to $3.8 trillion, a growth of $820 billion. And he did it in 5 years, versus the 7 of President Bush.

Your claim of double simply doesn't hold up. It's nearly equal right now, and - even if President Obama scales Federal spending back to just inflation - will out-pace President Bush dramatically, by several hundred billion dollars, by the time his 2nd term is over.

Is this an absolution of President Bush? Not at all. Rather, it is a condemnation of the squandering by BOTH Presidents. For, based on the facts, as bad as President Bush was (which was rather bad), President Obama is considerably, provably, worse.

Can you give a source for that $6.2 trillion? The figures I can find say $3.8 trillion, which is considerably lower.

Thats just the Federal government. Notice how I said 'government' spending, not 'Federal government spending.'

And there you go again, dodging the question. Can you give a source for that figure? Or are you going to act like a politician and nit-pick the question without trying to answer it? But here, I'll save you the trouble: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2012_0.html has the $6.2 trillion dollar figure, now that I know what you're talking about. Note, though, that that page also indicates that's against a $15.6 trillion gross domestic product. It took me about thirty seconds of searching to find that, but apparently you'd rather spend time nit-picking questions instead of trying to produce verification of facts.

It shouldn't have mattered what I said anyways, because you are a thinking and rational person, right? You surely know that Federal spending isnt the entire spending picture and thus any argument or conclusion you might make about how much the government is spending would be nonsense if you only included the Federal numbers. We arent talking about Federal taxes here, so we don't get to only consider the Federal budget.

I don't know what taxes you're talking about, since you didn't specify. I'm not psychic. However, I'll note that you know perfectly well that I pointed out that the income being taxed in the US compasses more than just household incomes, but you don't address that point at all. If you want to include all government spending instead of just federal spending, surely you must concede that all of the tax base should be included, not just households?

Third, you don't address his point - that most of those crying out for less government spending are in favor of more government spending on the military.

Quite frankly, bullshit. Thats what some partisan shitheads are saying about the other side, thats all. Saying it doesnt make it true, just like when I say that tea-party members are all racists and democrats are all boozing womanizer tax cheats.. guess what.. doesnt make the statement true. There is no point to 'address' as you so ignorantly demand because its just a loaded partisan bullshit statement.

And I didn't say his point was true. All I'm saying is that you didn't address it. Which was not bullshit. You then fail to address my points about how much we're overspending on the military.

So tell me... do you actually want to have a rational discussion, or not? If you're willing to talk facts and figures, that's one thing. If all you want to do is nit-pick and name-call, then there's no point in even trying to have a discussion with you.

And as I pointed out, the term "free" is being misused here. It is especially relevant since you were complaining that free libraries and such were less "free" than they used to be.

Plus, you claimed that someone shrunk government services. That didn't happen in total, though obviously the libraries didn't fare so well. Instead, the funding has become distributed in a different way. Consider that in 1997, New York State and its local governments spent roughly $150 billion on state gross product (SDP) of $660 billion. That's roughly a quarter. By 2009, they had spent $280 billion on SDP of somewhere around $1,100 billion. Still roughly a quarter. More of it is probably spent on interest payments (in other words, government service from past years) and pension liabilities, but it's still being spent.

Perhaps, these budgets have dropped substantial since 2009, but at least for twelve years, they held pretty steady.

I didn't necessarily think it should be a high priority, just that it was reasonable to look at their budget and nothing should be off-limits for scrutiny. In reality, the EPA budget makes up less than 1/10 of a percent of the overall federal budget. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total. Or about 1% of the total spending deficit. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown. Really insignificant when you consider the total deficit is 17.5-trillion,

No politician is willing to commit political suicide by trying to tackle medicare and social security which are the major spending.

I didn't necessarily think it should be a high priority, just that it was reasonable to look at their budget and nothing should be off-limits for scrutiny. In reality, the EPA budget makes up less than 1/10 of a percent of the overall federal budget. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total. Or about 1% of the total spending deficit. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown. Really insignificant when you consider the total deficit is 17.5-trillion,

No politician is willing to commit political suicide by trying to tackle medicare and social security which are the major spending.

Taxes in the US are at an all time low.

With the exception of the two world wars, USA's total government spending has been growing consistently. It also has nearly the highest corporate tax rate in the world.

The top income tax rate might be lower than before, but simply because people have more opportunity to leave a high-tax country than ever before. USA could afford to have high income taxes when it was the freest nation in the world, and half the world was at risk of falling into communist hands. Today Russia has a 13% flat tax! USA gets mediocre rankings on the Tax Misery Index, particularly in urban areas (under Democrat control).

The last time the wealth was this badly skewed in favour of the super rich with such ludicrously low taxes the Great Depression happened.

The "great depression" was a result of socialist policies, not income inequality.

It's not a coincidence. Funnelling money into the hands of the few and crippling the middle and lower classes brings the economic engine to its knees.

Funneling money? Wealth is redistributed from the rich to the poor (with much of it destroyed en route through government inefficiency and corruption).

Perhaps in your religion money falls from the sky, and the gods that send it intend for it to be shared equally, but that is not an objective understanding of economics. Money is created through human productivity, and some people simply create more of it than others. Some people invent new technologies and make decisions that improve our world, while others spend their days as robots, performing motions that were thought-out by others.

--libman

Lets keep this discussion fair at least. here

For 2012: Pensions $805 Billion Medicare $432 Billion Welfare (Medial and handouts) $764 Billion Deficit $1.1 Trillion (Remember how unacceptable Bush's $500 Billion was?)

So yea, we can keep hammering defence and ignore other areas, but that just shows you as a partsian shill.

Really? Please show some honest links on those. You will find that the 'welfare' section includes Medicare as well.
Here is a nice pic
here is another.

The fact is, that the items that YOU hate (wic, medicaid, HUD, etc) are next to NOTHING. If you wipe them out, we would still have about 3/4T deficit. Worse, our costs would rise elsewhere. So, you COULD go after Medicare and SS, but good luck with that. I noticed that even the republicans that voted for the neo-cons expect that THEIR ss/medicare will continue. Of course, none of them want to raise THEIR taxes either.

Lets keep this discussion fair at least. here

For 2012:
Pensions $805 Billion
Medicare $432 Billion
Welfare (Medial and handouts) $764 Billion
Deficit $1.1 Trillion (Remember how unacceptable Bush's $500 Billion was?)

So yea, we can keep hammering defence and ignore other areas, but that just shows you as a partsian shill.

Based on what metric?

Um, how about spending as a percent of GDP? Here is a link.

Its amazing that two world wars were fought with this kind of stuff being handled by people.

Fun fact: government spending consumed the majority of the US GDP (53%) at its peak during WWII. (And that's in the US, which had it easy compared to the combatant nations that were actually in the war, as in, fought within their borders).

So... impressive effort? Yes. Expensive? Hell, yes.

ok, 2005 dollars per capita.... federal government revenue has almost doubled. Has it ever been higher? Sure. Over time, has it been increasing, not decreasing? Yeah.

Here's 2005 dollars per capita in government spending, from $4 Trillion to now over $10 Trillion. It's still very obvious that while revenue has gone up over time, spending has just gone up even more.

Still clearly shows that the problem isn't less revenue, it's way, way too much spending. In 2000 we spent 30% less than in 2011 in per capita 2005 dollars. You can't explain that away by anything other than we're experiencing massive spending increases that have no relation to anything but that the feds just want to spend more money.

Let's do a simple test to see if tax cuts are primarily responsible for the deficit. If they are, then the deficits must be a result of revenue decreasing over the years while spending stays the same, right?

Compare US Federal Revenue over time, which has gone from 22% of GDP to 34% of GDP with US Federal Spending over time which has gone steadily upward.

Hmmm, seems pretty obvious that the issue is that spending has gone way up over time. While revenue hasn't quite kept up with the massive spending increases, it's also gone way up over time. So how can you blame tax cuts with a straight face? The fact is that federal government revenue went up after Reagan and Bush's "tax cuts". Congress just managed to spend even more money than they had before.

The people in D.C. think that if you plan to spend way more and then change your plan to increase spending not quite as much, that's a drastic cut.

Here's a modest proposal, how about we cut spending levels to what it was 10 or 20 years ago in the bad old days and then watch as the deficit magically turns into a massive surplus?

One problem with letting D.C. take more of our money is that they just spend it. They have an essentially unlimited list of things people would like them to spend our money on. At some point we have to put our foot down and say they're going to have to prioritize some of it.

Sadly, that doesn't seem to be going to happen anytime soon, since people are just arguing about how much of a spending increase we're going to have and where the extra money's going to be especially increased this year.

It was the quickest link I could find which illustrated what I was attempting to convey. Here is a less douchey .com link.

You are (possibly intentionally) conflating debt and deficit. The deficit was about $1.4 trillion when Bush left office, part of this was combined Bush and Obama budgets, but that is aside from my point that if you push that out over 4 years you get the $5 trillion debt number, which you were comparing to the $1 trillion deficit.

What is important, however, is that the deficit has steadily dropped over the last 4 years to around $900 billion, so while Bush consistently increased the deficit every year he was in office, Obama has consistently decreased it. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html

Yeah, because the federal government has been so much better at keeping its fiscal house in order.

The highest debt per capita of any state in the country is Connecticut at $5,402.

The per capita debt of the federal government is $51,654.92 or more than 9 times as much.

Total spending per capita in the United States has gone from $6,339.90 in 2000 to $11,194.30 in 2010. The inflation adjusted increase was 39.4%.

California and Illinois are acknowledged fiscal basket cases - the inflation adjusted per capita increase in spending in those two states from 2000 to 2012 were 42% and 57% respectively. The median state (Michigan at #25) had a 38% increase - slightly better than the US.

Let's just say that neither level of government has been fiscally responsible. All of these figures are increases per capita - more money being spent per person - which means even if everyone (including the rich) was pitching in like it was the height of the dot-com bubble we'd still be under water.

Yeah, because the federal government has been so much better at keeping its fiscal house in order.

The highest debt per capita of any state in the country is Connecticut at $5,402.

The per capita debt of the federal government is $51,654.92 or more than 9 times as much.

Total spending per capita in the United States has gone from $6,339.90 in 2000 to $11,194.30 in 2010. The inflation adjusted increase was 39.4%.

California and Illinois are acknowledged fiscal basket cases - the inflation adjusted per capita increase in spending in those two states from 2000 to 2012 were 42% and 57% respectively. The median state (Michigan at #25) had a 38% increase - slightly better than the US.

Let's just say that neither level of government has been fiscally responsible. All of these figures are increases per capita - more money being spent per person - which means even if everyone (including the rich) was pitching in like it was the height of the dot-com bubble we'd still be under water.

Which is actually completely misleading. The United States spent $941B in education, approximately 15% of total government spending which is much more than than the defense budget or total defense spending combined with veterans benefits. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ Maybe that's not enough or maybe it's not spent efficiently, but statements like yours are very misleading. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not familiar with how the United States is government. The United States is a highly decentralized country, and education spending is the responsibility of the state, county and municipal governments, not the national Federal government. Therefore, looking at Federal spending on education and complaining that we're not spending enough is unfair because you're ignoring almost half of all government spending in the United States.

The idea that our deficit is caused by some kind of crazy government spending though, is not legitimate. It is completely untrue.

Yeah, because this increasing slope isn't a big indicator of runaway spending or anything: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1990_2017USr_13s1li111mcn_F0t I guess you won't recognize the spending until we go truly hyperbolic, huh?

the Bush tax cuts will be responsible for fifty percent of the total US debt.

The Bush Tax Cuts expired in 2010 via sunset provisions. Now they're the Obama tax cuts. And regardless, they didn't appear to have that big an effect on total revenue: http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/revenue_chart_1990_2017USr_13s1li111mcn_F0t

The short-term dip in early 2000-2002 was erased by 2007. The revenue drop in 2009-2010 was caused by the recession, not the Bush tax cuts. Merely undoing them does not guarantee a revenue spike.

That's a little over one day's spending by the US Government!

Of course, they don't take in anywhere close to that, but that's a different issue.

See my corrected numbers -- it is more like a 15x growth in the economy over that time period.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1920_2010USb_13s1li011mcn__US_Gross_Domestic_Product_GDP_History

Why make a comparison with an event 15 years ago and ignore the different in value of the dollar?

Intels FDIV bug costs of $475M in 1994 is equivalent to $735M in today's dollars. I guess it's just not as impressive as saying "The cost of this glitch was a bit over half of the $475 million charge Intel took for the Pentium FDIV Bug."

If you want to make it sound more impressive, go back further in time "This loss was greater than the entire GDP of the united states in 1955 (ignoring adjustments for inflation)"

Nothing more to add, (agree to disagree) but just FYI...

I got some of my numbers from here. You can make your own charts on the fly. Really cool.

Federal spending in 1990 was $1.1 trilion. Source. Federal spending is currently $3.8 trillion. Source. These figures are a combination of "discretionary" and "mandatory" spending.

The individual income tax for this year is $1.359 trillion, and the corporate is $0.358 trillion. Source.

( 1.359 + 0.348 ) / 3.809 = 0.449 = 44.9%

If you remove the $1.707 trillion that represents the income tax from the total Federal revenues of $2.902 trillion, you are left with $1.195 trillion of revenues. $1.195 trillion is bigger than $1.1 trillion, hence current federal revenues, minus the income tax, could pay for the 1990 budget.

Ron Paul states that:

I want to abolish the income tax, but I don't want to replace it with anything. About 45 percent of all federal revenue comes from the personal income tax. That means that about 55 percent -- over half of all revenue -- comes from other sources, like excise taxes, fees, and corporate taxes.

We could eliminate the income tax, replace it with nothing, and still fund the same level of big government we had in the late 1990s. We don't need to "replace" the income tax at all.

Ron Paul is telling the truth. His 45% figure is accurate; his assertion that current Federal revenues sans income tax could pay for the 1990 budget, is accurate. You, however, are trying to confound the issue by bringing up irrelevant statistics, conflating statements I made with Ron Paul's statements, and outright lying when you say that Paul is doing so.

Federal spending in 1990 was $1.1 trilion. Source. Federal spending is currently $3.8 trillion. Source. These figures are a combination of "discretionary" and "mandatory" spending.

The individual income tax for this year is $1.359 trillion, and the corporate is $0.358 trillion. Source.

( 1.359 + 0.348 ) / 3.809 = 0.449 = 44.9%

If you remove the $1.707 trillion that represents the income tax from the total Federal revenues of $2.902 trillion, you are left with $1.195 trillion of revenues. $1.195 trillion is bigger than $1.1 trillion, hence current federal revenues, minus the income tax, could pay for the 1990 budget.

Ron Paul states that:

I want to abolish the income tax, but I don't want to replace it with anything. About 45 percent of all federal revenue comes from the personal income tax. That means that about 55 percent -- over half of all revenue -- comes from other sources, like excise taxes, fees, and corporate taxes.

We could eliminate the income tax, replace it with nothing, and still fund the same level of big government we had in the late 1990s. We don't need to "replace" the income tax at all.

Ron Paul is telling the truth. His 45% figure is accurate; his assertion that current Federal revenues sans income tax could pay for the 1990 budget, is accurate. You, however, are trying to confound the issue by bringing up irrelevant statistics, conflating statements I made with Ron Paul's statements, and outright lying when you say that Paul is doing so.

Maybe not, but $2 Trillion in war spending, plus $2 Trillion in unfunded Bush tax cuts (Funny the republicans didn't think it necessary to pay for the extension of their tax cuts) does make a sizable dent in our national deficit. Here's an interesting article on exactly this topic. Go look at historic trends of deficit spending and it's surprising that republicans are responsible for some of the largest rises in debt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/ezra-klein-doing-the-math-on-obamas-deficits/2012/01/31/gIQAnRs7fQ_story.html

Deficits:
FY 2007: $161 billion (R Congress R Whitehouse)
FY 2011: $1,300 billion (D Congress D Whitehouse)

It should also be noted that the US took in MORE money after the Bush tax cuts than before. This is because the economy boomed and the unemployment rate was under 5% much of the time. You actually get a bigger piece when you take a smaller piece from a large pie than when you take a larger piece from a smaller one.

Modded (Score -1, Fact)

It is very difficult to look at the Bush presidency - some of it including control of both houses of congress - and come away with a feeling that the Republicans represent fiscal discipline.

Deficits: FY 2007: $161 billion FY 2011: $1,300 billion

I don't think it's that difficult. You are just not trying.

Wow. That's about as bald an example of fact-picking as I think I've ever seen here. I'm no fan of Obama (or of Bush) -- in fact I've taken to calling them Obushma, because I really can't see much difference between them, but still... here's rest of the list from your link:

FY 2011: $1,300 billion (Obama)
FY 2010: $1,293 billion (Obama)
FY 2009: $1,413 billion (Bush)
FY 2008: $459 billion (Bush)
FY 2007: $161 billion (Bush)

I agree that the Republicans don't represent the voice of fiscal conservatism. AFAICT there is no significant voice of fiscal conservatism in American politics today. If there were, we'd have people discussing how we're going to achieve and maintain a few hundred billion in annual surpluses, to begin paying down the debt.

Maybe not, but $2 Trillion in war spending, plus $2 Trillion in unfunded Bush tax cuts (Funny the republicans didn't think it necessary to pay for the extension of their tax cuts) does make a sizable dent in our national deficit. Here's an interesting article on exactly this topic. Go look at historic trends of deficit spending and it's surprising that republicans are responsible for some of the largest rises in debt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/ezra-klein-doing-the-math-on-obamas-deficits/2012/01/31/gIQAnRs7fQ_story.html

Deficits:
FY 2007: $161 billion (R Congress R Whitehouse)
FY 2011: $1,300 billion (D Congress D Whitehouse)

It should also be noted that the US took in MORE money after the Bush tax cuts than before. This is because the economy boomed and the unemployment rate was under 5% much of the time. You actually get a bigger piece when you take a smaller piece from a large pie than when you take a larger piece from a smaller one.

It is very difficult to look at the Bush presidency - some of it including control of both houses of congress - and come away with a feeling that the Republicans represent fiscal discipline.

Deficits:
FY 2007: $161 billion
FY 2011: $1,300 billion

I don't think it's that difficult. You are just not trying.

That's because the scale of federal spending isn't nearly as massive as it was in the 80's or 30's-50's, and quantitative easing is the wrong approach.

That's bullshit

That's because the scale of federal spending isn't nearly as massive as it was in the 80's or 30's-50's...

LOLwut!?!?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total

Can I buy some pot from you, Professor? (from "Animal House", for the young'uns)

Strat

You realize that the fact that we're all chained to pump prices is precisely because we haven't gone down the liberal economic path, right?

And that the deficit problem was largely brought on by the previous administration. The current one is trying to reverse that, and may just be beginning to turn the corner on that.

You sure about that? Remember, Congress writes laws and controls the purse strings. This means that money spent is spent by Congress, not the president. Republicans held Congress until 2007. The deficit in 2007 was $161 billion. In 2009, just two years after the Democrats took over Congress, the deficit was $1,413 billion. For 2011, with a Democrat in the White House and in control of Congress, the deficit was $1300 billion. For 2012, the deficit is projected to be $1,327 billion.

Tell me again how they reversing the deficit spending? However, if by reversing, you meant increasing eight fold, then you are correct.

Source

There are plenty in the public who do not support these things. The fact is only a tiny fraction of the population actually votes. And this has more to do with votes not really counting for anything more than who the candidates are or what they support. Until they get rid of the electoral college and you get 1 vote for 1 person, and make it easier for people to vote either by having a national holiday on election day or online voting, our "democratic" system is really just smoke and mirrors with 2 parties that support the same political policies.

I'm going to disagree here about the electoral college. It's not really working the way it was designed (us electing representatives that somewhat independently decide who'll the best president will be, hasn't been that way since the 2nd president where they gave him a VP of the opposite party) but it's still protecting us from voter fraud. You see, the US census every 10 years determines how many electors each state gets to send - more population, more electors. Well, anybody who has ever covered US elections probably knows we probably have one of the most in the 1st world on the local and state levels with massive hijinx every election. Just look up the Republican primaries this time around and read about all the irregularities. BUT, the electoral college at least acts as a firewall; no state can send more electors than it has no matter what so the problem is a bit more contained. In a straight up popular vote, really big states who have 1,000,000 dead voters going to the polls will change the outcome much more often than in the electoral game and they'll be extra incentive to do so.

Adding more democracy has been always a time honored cry to make things better but has it? In 1913, the 17th amendment got adopted. It also added more democracy, it was the mandatory direct election of Senators by the people of their states rather than the states making their own rules, including often appointment by the state congress or governor. In effect, we got two houses of representatives rather than 1 and a house representing state's interests.

And what has this change landed us?
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/debt_deficit_brief.php

Perpetual wars and massive debt to gdp. Now, I'm not saying the 17th is responsible for all that, 1913 has indeed landed a host of changes to make things more "democratic" like income tax promised to only be applied to the top 0.01% super rich since tariffs were reportedly burdening the common man as well as the Federal Reserve.

But what I'm definitely saying is that tweak the systems as much as you want, when you have, in the words of George Carlin "If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public."

Go look at other countries, practically the whole western world and all 1st world countries are as deep in debt as us. Europe and Japan with their multi party Parliaments and whatever, tweaks, tweaks, tweaks didn't do a damn thing. We're just human and that's the problem with the assumptions. Collectively we just suck no matter what we tell ourselves about it being the fault of our systems instead. The only thing a system can do is minimize it for a (relatively) short time until it's bypassed one way or another.

In other words, your lower tax rates result in an increase in wealth and power for the organizations that sell you goods.

Your entire thesis is undone by a cursory googling of "historical federal spending vs GDP".

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2016USp_XXs1li111mcn_H0f_US_Federal_Debt

The State has dramatically increased its spending for decades, gobbling up the advances in the private sector... and for what? Most of it has gone to waste feeding the political power structure, buying votes with destructive social welfare programs, crony capitalism corporate subsidies, and making war.

You obviously misunderstand the relationship between tax policy, economic growth, and tax revenues. You've bought the line that increased tax percentage means higher tax receivables. You don't understand that high taxes destroy economic growth, drive businesses overseas and end up lowering tax revenues.

Actually, it would have helped if the poster realized that this is by GDP and not really the dollar amount. So much for how smart the Slashdot crowd is. Most can't even read from what I've just seen. Also note that I used the same site. So much for your assumed bias.
 
  More information that is slightly dated but we can see the trend.
 
  And yet more
 
  And even more. You'll note that even with the budget cuts we're still spending more than we did in 2008. Certainly not stone age figures.
 
So there you have it. Point proven. The education problems in the United States are not a funding problem. We have a social problem that people simply refuse to address. I can't imagine why, with all the data out there, we continue to bang our heads against a wall that simply doesn't exist. I suspect laziness to be totally honest. As Americans we have this idea that the solution to problems is to throw money or bullets at it. We see this with The War on Poverty, The War on Drugs, The War on Terrorism and The War on Ignorance. All of these things have brought us down a notch and none of them have made any progress in their stated goals. Instead of knee-jerk reactions please join me in wanting a solid solution with long term benefits for all involved. These problems are being "solved" by misrepresentation of the true underlying issues. It's costing all of us in time, money and quality of life. The approaches taken by our collective "leadership" have done nothing but throw up more schism to people who are wanting the same end results. We can take the time and come to a common ground, common sense solution. We can be better than we were. Why don't we do it?
 
Thank you for your time.

I'm not an expert, hence the suggestion being qualified as humble, but I think the current tax revenus of the US government would cover the 2006 budget.

Assuming that this is right (could be wrong), were people dying in the streets for lack of government services back then? Is there any crucial reason why the government couldn't survive on a budget equivalent to what it had just a few years ago?

You're pretty close - 2004 is closer to the right answer.
Federal revenue was 2,303.5 billion in 2011.
That is in the ballpark of spending in 2004 which was 2292.84 billion.

What you're missing is change in GDP over that time. The numbers are: $11,788.9b in 2004; $14,958.6b in 2011. So, GDP grew 26.9% so of course you would expect that there would be an increase in government services - it generally takes more resources to run a larger country. Additionally there were a couple of exigent circumstances which played a major part in the increased spending in the intervening years.

... Half our national budget goes to the military.

False. Half our national budget goes to health care and pensions (47%), defense only gets about a quarter (23%).

And I think we can surmize, given the US's current level of social-capitalist involvement, as compared to the rest of the modern world (G7 and BRIC), that we are not anywhere remotely close to the excessively socialist side.

The US government spends over 40% of the GDP each year on an increasingly upward trend:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html

At what point (75%, 85%, 100%) would you say the US government is "socialist enough". Keep in mind that at its peak the USSR only directed 45% of their command economy.

Yes, the federal deficit under Obama's 2 years is a smidgen less than Bush's last year. However, push it back through his entire presidency and it is definitely much more than it was. The point is, Obama AND Bush spend too much. The real Tea Party are those that actually support putting the government on the chopping block and reducing its size. Just because idiots show up to protests doesn't mean that the cause is idiotic.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_2001_2011USb_13s1li111lcn_G0fF0f

Really? Because we have historically low tax rates right now. How do you think that happened if "the Government just gets bigger and bigger and bigger"?

Because the population grew? GDP grew? The "total federal budget" represents the size of government -- this has continued to escalate over time (beyond the rate of inflation). And the important factor is that the RATIO of "increased government spending to GDP growth" has been trending upward for nearly a century: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html

Ha! put the crack pipe down and get a dose of reality ok? What did the government do with the money they took in the 50's? DId they run a giganormous surplus? Or did they just spend the whole fucking wad? What did they do in the 60s? They spent it. How about the 70s? Yep, they spent it then too. Government will spend every last nickel you allow them to take from you. Period. As a bonus question: go look up per capita education spending in 1960 vs 2010 and compare test score results during the same. Hint: look here to start.