dancing, guns and soup don't mix (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mizalaina) wrote,@ 2004-07-19 06:34:00 |
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"I want my two dollars!": The House of Cards
In posting this response tokitiara I was finding links for US DoD spending. I thought you might like to know how the 2005 budget breaks down. BTW, think about these numbers for a moment. These are *billions* of dollars. Try to conceive of a billion dollars. What it means is that every person 15 years and older (and not all of these people are taxpayers) pays their share of $4.30. Or, to look at it another way, a billion dollars costs every human being alive in the US $3.36. Therefore, for a family of four, 2005's discretionary DoD budget is costing your household ($3.36 * $420 * 4) = $5,644.80. Per person that is $1,411.20.
Summary Table is here. Lots of interesting information in that puppy.
Discretionary spending by department:
Mandatory spending:
The current budget deficit is $527 billion. For each person in the US that's $1,770 just this year. The government is spending almost $1800 per person that it doesn't have. That means you could cut completely the discretionary spending for DoD and Homeland Security and there would still be a deficit of $97 billion. Or I could eliminate every other US federal department for 2005 and there would still be a deficit of $138.6 billion. If every person in the US, including newborns, chipped in $465.69, and every department besides DoD and Homeland Security was eliminated, that would balance this year's budget. If you completely eliminated Social Security spending in 2005 then there would still be a budget deficit of $17 billion. If you eliminated Medicaid and Medicare then there would still be a deficit of $49 billion. If you left those programs, into which everybody pays and expects to get something out of directly, and eliminated all other mandatory spending, it still leaves a $207 billion deficit, more than the budgets of HUD, HHS, Education, Labour, Veteran's Affairs and the Social Security Administration combined.
So let's think about how much the DoD budget has increased in the last four years. The DoD's discretionary budget for 2001 was $303 billion. Bush has increased that to almost $402 billion. That increase alone, $99 billion, is less than the projected 2005 budget for any two departments added together (unless you add Education and HHS, which gives $125.5 billion.)
Of course, if you include "Homeland Security," a department that didn't exist in 2001, to the 2005 Defense budget then the difference between 2001 and 2005 spending is $127.3 billion, which is more than even HHS and Education together. DoD/Homeland Security's budgets for 2005 are a combined $430 billion.
Let's take a couple of my favourite programs: NASA and the National Science Foundation. Both fund science research directly. I was a NASA contractor for a couple of years, working on the Technology Transfer program. The combined 2005 budgets for these two science-heavy departments yields $21.9 billion, which costs every person in the US $94.17/year. (Compared, remember, to the $1411.20 that DoD is costing you.)
If you think about one of the arguments for high military spending, it's that DoD spending helps improve technology by leaps and bounds. This is certainly true; the fundamental technologies on which the Internet runs grew out of DoD-funded programs at ARPA.
Interest: $178 billion (every person in the US, from newborns up, will pay $598.08 in 2005, just in the interest the US government has accrued on its debts.)
In case you were wondering, the US federal government's debt is $8,111 billion, or $8.1 trillion. For each person in the US their share is $27,252.96. That's just debt, nothing else. Your personal share of this debt is $27,252.96. Your grandfather's share of the debt is $27,252.96. Your two-year-old's share of the US debt is $27,252.96. You'd have to eliminate the deficit PLUS another $178 billion in spending (or a $178 billion increase in revenue, about $600 per person) to even begin to have ONE DOLLAR to start paying down federal debt.
Does this make you angry? It should.
In 2003 Canada's federal debt was $629.6 billion. Every person here in Soviet Canuckistan has a share of the debt that is $19,349.16, or $7,903.80 less than every person in the US. Another way of looking at it is that our share of our federal debt is 71% of what your share of your federal debt is.
That amount is decreasing every year. Canada has paid down its debt every year since at least 1999. Not by much -- the debt in 1999 was $648.4 billion, so in four years they've only paid $18 billion. Buy hey, it's something. In addition to all of our spending we are paying our interest PLUS paying down debt.
Whatever else I can say about the current and previous federal Liberals, Paul Martin's fiscal policies are quite sound.
In posting this response to
kitiara I was finding links for US DoD spending. I thought you might like to know how the 2005 budget breaks down. BTW, think about these numbers for a moment. These are *billions* of dollars. Try to conceive of a billion dollars. What it means is that every person 15 years and older (and not all of these people are taxpayers) pays their share of $4.30. Or, to look at it another way, a billion dollars costs every human being alive in the US $3.36. Therefore, for a family of four, 2005's discretionary DoD budget is costing your household ($3.36 * $420 * 4) = $5,644.80. Per person that is $1,411.20. Summary Table is here. Lots of interesting information in that puppy.
Discretionary spending by department:
- Defense, $401.7 billion (49% of the total discretionary budget)
- ALL OTHER DEPARTMENTS, $416.7 billion (51%) including $28.3 billion for Homeland Security
-
- Agriculture, $19.1 billion
- Commerce, $5.7 billion
- Education, $57.3 billion
- Energy, $23.6 billion
- Health and Human Services, $68.2 billion
- Homeland Security, $28.3 billion (IMO this belongs with Defense)
- Housing and Urban Development, $31.3 billion
- Interior, $10.8 billion
- Justice, $18.7 billion
- Labor, $11.9 billion
- State, $10.3 billion
- Transportation, $13.3 billion
- Treasury, $10.8 billion
- Veterans Affairs, $29.7 billion
- Corps of Engineers, $4 billion
- Office of the President, $0.3 billion
- GSA, $0.2 billion
- International Assistance, $19.3 billion
- Judicial Branch, $5.4 billion
- Legislative Branch, $4 billion
- NASA, $16.2 billion
- NSF, $5.7 billion
- Small Business Administration, $0.7 billion
- Social Security Administration, $7.6 billion
- Other agencies, $6.5 billion
- Agriculture, $19.1 billion
Mandatory spending:
- Social Security, $510 billion (keep in mind that this is essentially supposed to be an investment account for retirees, so the way this should work is that yearly social security income should be more than social security spending)
- Medicare, $290 billion
- Medicaid and SCHIP, $188 billion
- Other, $320 billion
The current budget deficit is $527 billion. For each person in the US that's $1,770 just this year. The government is spending almost $1800 per person that it doesn't have. That means you could cut completely the discretionary spending for DoD and Homeland Security and there would still be a deficit of $97 billion. Or I could eliminate every other US federal department for 2005 and there would still be a deficit of $138.6 billion. If every person in the US, including newborns, chipped in $465.69, and every department besides DoD and Homeland Security was eliminated, that would balance this year's budget. If you completely eliminated Social Security spending in 2005 then there would still be a budget deficit of $17 billion. If you eliminated Medicaid and Medicare then there would still be a deficit of $49 billion. If you left those programs, into which everybody pays and expects to get something out of directly, and eliminated all other mandatory spending, it still leaves a $207 billion deficit, more than the budgets of HUD, HHS, Education, Labour, Veteran's Affairs and the Social Security Administration combined.
So let's think about how much the DoD budget has increased in the last four years. The DoD's discretionary budget for 2001 was $303 billion. Bush has increased that to almost $402 billion. That increase alone, $99 billion, is less than the projected 2005 budget for any two departments added together (unless you add Education and HHS, which gives $125.5 billion.)
Of course, if you include "Homeland Security," a department that didn't exist in 2001, to the 2005 Defense budget then the difference between 2001 and 2005 spending is $127.3 billion, which is more than even HHS and Education together. DoD/Homeland Security's budgets for 2005 are a combined $430 billion.
Let's take a couple of my favourite programs: NASA and the National Science Foundation. Both fund science research directly. I was a NASA contractor for a couple of years, working on the Technology Transfer program. The combined 2005 budgets for these two science-heavy departments yields $21.9 billion, which costs every person in the US $94.17/year. (Compared, remember, to the $1411.20 that DoD is costing you.)
If you think about one of the arguments for high military spending, it's that DoD spending helps improve technology by leaps and bounds. This is certainly true; the fundamental technologies on which the Internet runs grew out of DoD-funded programs at ARPA.
Interest: $178 billion (every person in the US, from newborns up, will pay $598.08 in 2005, just in the interest the US government has accrued on its debts.)
In case you were wondering, the US federal government's debt is $8,111 billion, or $8.1 trillion. For each person in the US their share is $27,252.96. That's just debt, nothing else. Your personal share of this debt is $27,252.96. Your grandfather's share of the debt is $27,252.96. Your two-year-old's share of the US debt is $27,252.96. You'd have to eliminate the deficit PLUS another $178 billion in spending (or a $178 billion increase in revenue, about $600 per person) to even begin to have ONE DOLLAR to start paying down federal debt.
Does this make you angry? It should.
In 2003 Canada's federal debt was $629.6 billion. Every person here in Soviet Canuckistan has a share of the debt that is $19,349.16, or $7,903.80 less than every person in the US. Another way of looking at it is that our share of our federal debt is 71% of what your share of your federal debt is.
That amount is decreasing every year. Canada has paid down its debt every year since at least 1999. Not by much -- the debt in 1999 was $648.4 billion, so in four years they've only paid $18 billion. Buy hey, it's something. In addition to all of our spending we are paying our interest PLUS paying down debt.
Whatever else I can say about the current and previous federal Liberals, Paul Martin's fiscal policies are quite sound.
