Yep...we have our priorities!

[SHRED]

Discretionary Budget - FY2011

The following chart shows the breakdown of the proposed federal discretionary budget for fiscal year 2011 by function area.

The discretionary budget refers to the part of the federal budget proposed by the President, and debated and decided by Congress each year. The part of the budget constitutes more than one-third of total federal spending. The remainder of the federal budget is called 'mandatory spending.' Fiscal Year 2009 will run from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009.

Note that this chart includes the war-related spending requested by the administration as supplemental to the regular budget proposal.




http://nationalpriorities.org/en/resources/federal-budget-101/charts/discretionary-spending/discretionary-budget-fy2011/


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[LaurenG]

1. That's disturbing

It puts into perspective our messed up priorities. Fear, Fear, Fear, we must defend ourselves from monsters!

[Divernan]

5. The fear is manufactured to get public support the wars of aggression

[liberal N proud]

2. 4% for education and 58% for killing people

Wonder how the pro-life people quantify that?

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[notesdev]

4. That's a very misleading graph

From looking at it you would think the largest items in the federal budget other than military didn't exist at all.

Why would someone create such a graph?

[SHRED]

6. This is the discretionary budget

[notesdev]

8. Yes, but

separating the discretionary budget from the rest of the budget presents a very misleading picture of what we are actually spending money on. The distribution in the actual budget is so different from what you see on this graph, I have trouble coming up with a good reason to even make this graph, if not for the purpose of misleading people.

We could cut out everything that's listed on that graph immediately and this country would still be in the hole, budget wise.

[we can do it]

7. To Expose the Truth?

[notesdev]

10. Here's the truth for you

US federal spending FY 2010:



This is the complete federal budget FY 2010 and it presents a very very different picture than you see with the "discretionary" chart. This, not that other chart, is the budgetary reality that we must deal with; there are five major spending areas in the budget that make up more than 75% of all spending.


Here's our revenue chart, same fiscal year:




Here's the OMB source data:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/hist01z1.xls


Now here's our problem:

Total spending: $3.45 trillion
Total revenues: $2.16 trillion

Spending as a percentage of revenues: 160%

If that weren't bad enough, drilling down further we can see that cutting the entirety of "discretionary" spending isn't even enough to get us to the break-even point:

Total mandatory spending: $2.32 trillion
Total discretionary spending: $1.13 trillion

Mandatory spending minus total federal revenues: $0.16 trillion
Mandatory spending as a percentage of revenues: 107%

In other words, we start $160 billion in the hole before ANY discretionary spending at all is even proposed - before we've spent a dime on our bloated military, we're already in the red!


Bottom line: There's no fixing the federal budget without reducing not just the military budget, but also Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs (unemployment, VA, food stamps, and so on).

Medicare and Medicaid are particular problems because the rate of growth of health care expenses (which has accelerated, not slowed down under HCR) will cause the former alone to eclipse even Social Security spending in the near term.


I'm being a stickler on this, because until we recognize the basic facts of the matter, there is no basis to make any rational policy decisions about what to do next.

My position here is that we need to find less expensive solutions to our societal problems, and that this is the central fiscal challenge for the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future.

Now, some will say "raise taxes" at this point. I refer any who might to the results of the 2010 election - you might ponder why exactly things went so badly for us (our leadership sure hasn't). Your average Joe who is already suffering greatly from this Depression is in zero mood whatsoever to pony up additional money, when he needs that money himself to survive.

(By the way, this is just the federal budgetary picture. For many states and local governments the problems are far worse!)

Everybody needs to sober the fuck up, stop making emotion-based judgments on fiscal matters, and get serious about solving this problem. A failure to do so will mean being further cut out of the decision-making processes at all levels of government, leading to what we see happening today in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, and in many other places.

[Initech]

9. 56% military budget, but only 5% vet services???

:wtf: