A while ago, I created a “poll question” based on the actual spending by the Federal Government
Normal “Talk Show” cliches about cutting the Federal budget go something like “We should cut off foreign aid! Shut down the department of Energy! Reduce what we pay Congress! Shut down Amtrak! Shut down the Department of Education! Cut out the waste, fraud and abuse!… but INCREASE spending on the military – the only thing the government does well!
Or more generally, keep everything than helps me, stop doing everything that helps someone else, and find someone else to pay for it all.
I’ll see if I can create a table for the 2011-2012 budget and let people play “Cut $1,000 billion in spending from this budget” and see what an impossible a task it is to do and think through the first wave of reactions if you do. This took a hundred years to build – it won’t be undone in a day.
| Program | Department | Amount ($b) |
|---|---|---|
| Peace Time Military | Defense | 553 |
| War Spending | Defense | 117 |
| Discretionay | Agriculture | 27 |
| Food & Nutrition (WIC, Food Stamps, School Lunches) | Agriculture | 99 |
| Crop Insurance | Agriculture | 3 |
| Census (Was $6B for 2010) | Commerce | 1 |
| NOAA | Commerce | 5 |
| National Institute of Standards and Technology | Commerce | 1 |
| Wireless and DTV iniriatives | Commerce | 2 |
| Intelligence (CIA, NSA, etc.) | National Intelligence | Classified |
| Primary & Secondard schools | Education | 22 |
| Title 1 Special Ed grants to states | Education | 13 |
| Pell Grants | Education | 36 |
| Vocational Rehab State Grants | Education | 3 |
| Nuclear Safety | Energy | 11 |
| Energy Research | Energy | 5 |
| Environmental Management | Energy | 6 |
| Home Energy Rebates | Energy | 2 |
| FDA | HHS | 3 |
| Center for Disease Control | HHS | 6 |
| Indian Health Programs | HHS | 6 |
| Health Services (HRSAH | HHS | 7 |
| Medicare (eldery, disabled) | HHS | 485 |
| Medicaid (Poor) | HHS | 279 |
| Other Health | HHS | 112 |
| Customs | Homeland Security | 10 |
| TSA | Homeland Security | 5 |
| Coast Guard | Homeland Security | 9 |
| Federal Emergency Mgmt (FEMA) | Homeland Security | 7 |
| Secret Service | Homeland Security | 2 |
| Other DHS | Homeland Security | 10 |
| Immigration (INS) | Homeland Security | 3 |
| Community Development | Housing (HUD) | 4 |
| Homeless programs | HUD | 2 |
| Section 8 Housing | HUD | 19 |
| Public Housing Projects | HUD | 16 |
| Land Management | Interior | 1 |
| Land Reclamation | Interior | 1 |
| USGS (Earthquake, Tsunami, Mapping, etc...) | Interior | 1 |
| Fish and Wildlife | Interior | 2 |
| National Parks | Interior | 3 |
| Indian Affairs | Interior | 2 |
| FBI | Justice | 8 |
| Drug Enforcement (DEA) | Justice | 2 |
| Federal Prisons | Jusice | 7 |
| US Marshalls | Justice | 1 |
| BATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms) | Justice | 1 |
| US Attorneys | Justice | 2 |
| Community Policing, Violence against Women | Justice | 3 |
| Justice actions | Justice | 1 |
| Unemployment Insurance | Labor | 93 |
| Unemployment Admin | Labor | 3 |
| Training & Employment | Labor | 3 |
| Job Corps | Labor | 2 |
| Labor Statistics | Labor | 1 |
| Other Labor (OSHA, Mine Safety, Wage & Hour) | Labor | 3 |
| State Dept | State | 10 |
| Agency for International Development (USAID) | State | 1 |
| UN & Peacekeeping | State | 4 |
| Economic SupportJ (Foreign Aid) | State | 6 |
| Refugee assistance | State | 2 |
| Foreign Military Assistance (Middle East, Pakistan, etc...) | State | 6 |
| Food for Peace | State / USDA | 2 |
| Global Health (AIDS in Africa, etc...) | State | 9 |
| Development Assistance | State | 3 |
| Millenium Challenge | State | 1 |
| Treasury International Pgm | State | 3 |
| Peace Corp | State | 0.4 |
| VOA, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty | State | 0.7 |
| Airports (FAA) | Transportation | 0.4 |
| Highways (FHA) | Transportation | 44 |
| Traffic Safety (NHTSA) | Transportation | 1 |
| Railroads (FRA) | Transportation | 3 |
| Public Transit (FTA) | Transportation | 13 |
| TARP | Treasury | 13 |
| GSE (bailouts) | Treasury | $ |
| IRS | Treasury | $13 |
| Tax Expenditure Outlays (?) | Treasury | 81 |
| Veterans Pensions | Veteran Affairs | 53 |
| VA tuition assistance | Veterans affairs | 10 |
| Veterans Hospitals | Veteran affairs | 53 |
| VA Admin | Veteran affairs | 3 |
| Army Corps of Engineers | Corps of Engineers | 8 |
| Environment | EPA | 10 |
| Space Exploration | NASA | 18 |
| Science Research | National Science Foundation | 8 |
| Small Business | SBA | $1 |
| Old Age Pensions | Social Security | 860 |
| SSI (Pensions for poor people and the disabled) | Social Security | 47 |
| Other Social Security | Social Security | 55 |
| Americorps Corp | Community Service | 1 |
| Interest on the debt (Non Government) | Treasury | 240 |
| Interest on the Debt (Trust Funds) | Treasury | 189 |
Why not 5% across the board – every government payout of any kind – for starters? All pay checks, all new contracts, all…everything. It’s a beginning. And one could not be accused of playing favorites – every program, every constituient, everything. This is what I find so maddening about the two sides, they each want to increase their ideas and cut the opposition ideas. Combined with the relentless drumbeat from the public to cut everything but their “stuff”.
We are doomed.
5% across the board would be $185 billion. Only $1,500 billion more to cut and the budget will be balanced.
Hey, look out in the ocean – does that wave look strange to you?
What I’ve realized in part is there is another ponzi scheme angle to this whole thing. The “International Banking” community looks at two measures to decide if a country is becoming in debt trouble – the ratio of the debt to the country’s GDP, and the ratio of the annual deficit to the country’s GDP.
The problem is that the money that a country borrows to do spending at a minimum adds 1:1 to the GDP, since government spending is part of the GDP. More than likely, that government spending has a multiplier effect on the GDP (the government worker buys a car which was made by non-government employees). This is the core of Keynesian economics – that each $1 in government spending creates more than $1 in GDP – and once the economy is booming, you harvest the crop during the good times and pay back the borrowed money.
So the more money the government borrows that it doesn’t have, the better its finances look based on those ratios. One of the problems with this (which I clearly remember seeing in college) is there is an assumption that the GDP will continue to grow forever, just like real estate prices will continue to go up forever…
Until the economy contracts and can’t be stimulated to restart due to resource shortages or a population that refuses to produce goods and services. The future growth in GDP is fake, the debt is real.
The GDP of the United States is around $14 trillion. 25% of that is government spending (all levels). The federal government is going to borrow $1.7 trillion. By adding that 12% to the economy, the economy is expected to grow maybe 2% for the year. If unfunded government spending was subtracted from the GDP, the GDP is dropping 10% this year.
Further obfuscating the meaning of GDP is it measures the amount of new goods and services produced – it is not measuing the loss in wealth due to deterioration of assets – like the value of real estate. The value of all real estate at the beginning of the 2008 bubble burst was around $24 trillion. Estimates vary, but the value of the real estate has probably lost about $10 trillion so far, and still dropping.
The perceived value of a fiat currency is based mainly on one thing – the ability of the government to tax its citizens in the future. The ability to tax in the future is dependent on the country producing wealth and the people being able to pay the taxes. The value is also somewhat based on what the government itself owns and income that can be derived from that. Income from things other than taxes is a small portion of the income stream supporting the US dollar.
As I learned it, the perceived value of a fiat currency is based on the willingness of people to accept it (tender) for payment. i.e. Faith. Hence the rise of local scrip…
Particularly when there is no gold backing the ‘counterfeit$’.
FULL Faith and Credit of the U.S. implies 100% confiscation.
Geithner is warning Congress to raise the ceiling… “or else”. ???
Yes, that’s more or less cause and effect – people’s willingness to accept a currency is based on the ability of the government to return something of value in the future. It’s the ability to raise revenue in that future that backs the promise.
One way for a country to make its currency not wanted is to burden it with restrictions like rules against reptriating earnings (India tried that in its Socialist heyday) or forcing an official exchange rate on its domestic use but letting it float on the international market.
The US dollar has largely avoided those traps – but if it gets a reputation that the U.S. will “freeze” another sovereign country’s assets because they are in dollars and in a bank within the reach of the US Banking system, that willingness to accept dollars could fade
I downloaded the ‘budget’ (pdf) a few months ago… each section begins with some propaganda of ‘what our dept does, why we need this, how we help you”, blah blah.
Let’s cut 100 billion off the top with Treasury: Tarp, GSE, and ‘Outlays’ (?).
Cut 100 billion on DOD ‘War Spending’… Iraq can repay us with their oil.
What about DHS and CIA, NSA, etc? Any guesses as to the costs of the most expensive computers, satellites, human resources, and toys to spy on us? $100
Medicare: As I stated in another thread; Granny does not have a ‘right’ to eternal life at the expense of taxpayers with her $3,000 a month prescriptions on a $5 ‘co-pay’. Part of her excessive cost is caused by people abusing and over-billing the system. Slash 400 billion from HHS and flush out the diagnostic & pharmaceutical rackets.
Okay, I’m up to $700 billion. By now, so many citizens are calling for my head on a stick, I might as well cut Social Security, Labor, and Agriculture for the final $300.
There you have it: $1,000,000,000,000.00 cut from the federal budget.
At this point, there is rioting in the streets and I have been ‘dispatched’ by an angry old union retiree who accepts SNAP cards at his ‘business’ on Chicago’s south side.
How tragic that 185 billion isn’t a significant amount of money relative to the size of the problem.
Likewise within some agencies.
For example, the last 4 items of HHS total $780 billion… btw, what is ‘Other Health’ for $112 billion?
In that same department, FDA & CDC get a total of $9 billion.
That’s 1% of HHS budget to oversee food, drugs, and disease vectors.
Seems contrary to a sensible (preventative or proactive) health care policy.
“Other health” was my way to avoid listing a bunch of programs that are only a few billion each – I took the total HHS and subtracted all the huge items and showed the rest as “Other”
Substance Abuse and mental health, HIV/AIDS, Fraud and Abuse Control, administratives costs are around $20 billion, Office of Civil Rights, National coordinator for Health Information Technology, Social Services Emergency Fund,
The one item that surprised me by its size was the National Institutute of Health – it gets $31 billion. My impression its task is long term medical studies, but I’m guessing they do a lot of pointless things
Down in the footnotes, they describe a program that sounds like a DHS initiative to protect the country from biological weapons
The information I put in the table comes from the overview documents – each department / agency is going to have more detail if you want to drill down:
http://www.hhs.gov/about/hhsbudget.html
http://www.hhs.gov/about/FY2012budget/fy2012bib.pdf
Each department within HHS has a couple pages where they list the individual programs they run….
So if I look to see what the “Health Resources and Services Admnistration” does, I see:
– 4 billion for health centers (?)
– National Health Service Corps
– Oral Health training (Brush your teeth!)
– Nursing workforce Diversity
– Home Heallth Aide Demonstration Project
– Medical Malpratice coverage for free clinics
– Newborn hearing screening
etc, etc… the key to protecting Kingdoms is to make sure they don’t grow big enough to be noticed.
I think I found the answer to my “todo” item – the folks who are being allowed to participate in Medicare Part A without being 65 or disabled, are people with HIV/AIDS. HHS pays into the Medicare Part A fund from general revenues to cover that part