Trend: Government payments to individuals (58%) have doubled in the last 40 years. Interest on the debt (10%) will be growing rapidly in the next few years.
Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine describes US Government spending on MSN Money. Excerpts below.
Link: How Uncle Sam spends your tax dollar - MSN Money
The biggest single chunk of that so-called nondiscretionary spending -- more than 20% of the total budget -- is used to pay Social Security benefits to retirees. Another 15% pays the tab for Medicare health benefits. An additional 7% goes for Medicaid, 3% for veterans' benefits and 1.3% for supplemental security income used to assist the aged, disabled and blind. In fact, all government payments to individuals, including aid to poor families with children (welfare, which accounts for about 1% of the budget), food stamps (about 1.3%), farm subsidies (1%) and a variety of other government assistance and benefit programs, amount to about 58% of the budget. That's twice the share of the budget such payments claimed 40 years ago. And the percentage continues to climb, giving those pushing reform of such entitlement programs a powerful argument.
Interest on the debt claims about 10% of the budget. When President Bush took office in 2001, the national debt was $5.6 trillion, but deficits have pushed that number closer to $9 trillion. Where's the red ink coming from? Democrats blame Bush's tax cuts and wasted defense spending. Republicans, claiming that Bush's tax cuts boosted the economy and increased revenue, blame increased deficits on wasteful social programs and spending necessary to fight the war.
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