The United States Federal Budget

[Mac1958]

2013:

2017:

So what sticks out to you? For me,

• Interest on the debt nearly doubles, from 7% to 12%, and that's assuming that interest rates stay under control. How many of us would like to bet the house on that one?
• Defense spending is reduced significantly, from 24% to 18%. If done right, I'd bet that won't decay the effectiveness of the military.
• Health care, from 24% to 28%. Holy crap. The politicians are too busy fundraising and posing for the teevee camera to work on our biggest health care problem, costs.

Thoughts?

.

 

[waltky]

Treasury borrowed to push debt to the limit...

Treasury Says It Balanced Budget in December—But Borrowed $96B on Dec. 31 to Hit Debt Limit During Fiscal Cliff Negotiations
January 11, 2013 - In its monthly statement for December, released Friday, the U.S. Treasury says the federal government balanced its budget during the month, bringing in roughly $270 billion in revenues while making roughly $270 billion in expenditures.

Yet, the Treasury also says that during December it increased by $63.079 billion the national debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress, thus dramatically bringing the debt to that legal limit on Dec. 31, just as Congress and the White House were involved in final negotiations on a deal to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff”--which would have cancelled all of the lower income tax rates signed into law by President George W. Bush. As the fiscal cliff negotiations were underway on Dec. 31, the Treasury, according to the Daily Treasury Statement for that day, borrowed an additional $95.953 billion against the statutory limit, thus increasing the debt from $16.298022 trillion at the start of business that morning to $16.393975 trillion at the close of business that day. (The current legal limit on the debt is $16.394 trillion.)

The Treasury did not spend all of the new money it borrowed that day, however. Tax revenues, after all, were actually meeting federal expenditures for the month, balancing the budget for at least the 31 days of December. Instead, Treasury stashed an additional $33.954 billion into its cash reserve. Thus, it increased the cash it was holding in the bank by the end of that day to $92.720 billion. In other words, the Treasury not only balanced the budget in December, it closed the month with $92.720 billion in cash on hand. That $92.720 billion in cash that Treasury finished December with was $43.773 billion more than the cash Treasury had on hand at the beginning of December. At that point, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, Treasury had only $48.947 billion in cash on hand. Indeed, as recently as Nov. 28, the Treasury had gotten by with only $16.103 billion in cash on hand, according do the Treasury statement for that day.

In fact, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, the $92.720 billion in cash Treasury had in its account on the same day it borrowed $95.953 billion and declared the debt limit had been reached was about $10.5 billion more than the $85.446 billion in cash Treasury held at the beginning of fiscal 2013. Did Treasury need to imminently spend the extra $33.954 billion it added to it cash account New Year's Eve? No. A week later, at the close of business on Monday, Jan. 7, 2013, according to the Daily Treasury Statement for that day, Treasury still had $63.870 billion cash on hand—having drawn down only $28.85 billon of the extra $33.954 billion it stashed way on debt-limit day.

On Dec. 31, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and carbon copied to House Speaker John Boehner and other congressional leaders, declaring that Treasury had reached the statutory limit on the federal debt and that he was declaring a “debt issuance suspension period” until Feb. 28. During this “suspension period,” the Treasury will take extraordinary measures, including suspending payments into two federal worker retirement accounts, to avoid increasing the national debt. On Dec. 26, five days before Geithner sent the debt-limit notification letter, he had sent Congress a letter predicting—accurately, it turned out—that the Treasury would hit the debt limit on Dec. 31 (just as the government would be hitting the so-called fiscal cliff). “I am writing to inform you that the statutory debt limit will be reached on December 31, 2012,” Geithner said in that letter.

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[jwoodie]

What Budget? Despite its Constitutional mandate, the Senate hasn't passed a budget bill in four years. The SCOTUS should hold that the Senate cannot pass any new laws until it complies with its Constitutional responsibilities

 

[GoneBezerk]

Uh.....defense spending is directed and authorized in the US Constitution.....there is nothing in there about Healthcare spending. So when healthcare spending grows larger than defense spending by stealing money from defense spending....this is pure fraud, waste and abuse along with stupidity.

 

[Michelle420]

2013:

2017:

So what sticks out to you? For me,

• Interest on the debt nearly doubles, from 7% to 12%, and that's assuming that interest rates stay under control. How many of us would like to bet the house on that one?
• Defense spending is reduced significantly, from 24% to 18%. If done right, I'd bet that won't decay the effectiveness of the military.
• Health care, from 24% to 28%. Holy crap. The politicians are too busy fundraising and posing for the teevee camera to work on our biggest health care problem, costs.

Thoughts?

.

Where did you get the charts from I am looking everywhere for it.

The Budget | The White House

 

[Doubletap]

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed.”
-Ayn Rand, author, "Atlas Shrugged"

 

[kiwiman127]

Regarding healthcare spending, the US should do what the rest of the world's governments do, they negotiate the pricing of healthcare with the providers/manufacturers..
Look what other countries pay compared to the US and the US does not have the best healthcare in the world. As that is the case, why in the hell doesn't this country do something about it? The US isn't gettings it's bang for it dollar unlike the rest of the world.

 

[Toro]

The United States has done little to solve it's fiscal problems.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

We need more government programs because they grow the economy. Government spending and unemployment stimulate the economy.

Remember, the economy?

 

[AmyNation]

24% on pensions? We're spending less on education, but more in pensions?

 

[saveliberty]

2013:

2017:

So what sticks out to you? For me,

• Interest on the debt nearly doubles, from 7% to 12%, and that's assuming that interest rates stay under control. How many of us would like to bet the house on that one?
• Defense spending is reduced significantly, from 24% to 18%. If done right, I'd bet that won't decay the effectiveness of the military.
• Health care, from 24% to 28%. Holy crap. The politicians are too busy fundraising and posing for the teevee camera to work on our biggest health care problem, costs.

Thoughts?

.

I think you covered it pretty well. I would add that everything is in percentages, so I assume the budget has grown 2 times over.