Federal Budget

[rowyn]

See, here’s what I don’t get. This is from the historical tables spreadsheet found at budget.gov (figures are in millions of dollars):

Year	Receipts	Outlays	Surplus or Deficit(−)
2006	2,406,876	2,655,057	-248,181
2007	2,568,001	2,728,702	-160,701
2008	2,523,999	2,982,554	-458,555
2009	2,104,995	3,517,68	-1,412,686
2010 estimate	2,165,119	3,720,701	-1,555,582
2011 estimate	2,567,181	3,833,861	-1,266,680

You can see that we're running a deficit the whole time, of course. In 2008, the economy goes in the toilet and outlays start to rise: 700 billion set aside for TARP, and President G. W. Bush's stimulus -- which was, I dunno, 100 or 200 billion?

In 2009, we're still paying for TARP, bailouts, plus the much more expensive -- what, 900 billion or so? -- stimulus from President Obama.

That stimulus was supposed to be one-time, right? And most of the money lent to banks under TARP has been repaid, and under the TARP act, repaid TARP money must be used for deficit reduction.

So if the stimulus was one-time and TARP was repaid, why are budget outlays for 2010 estimated as higher than 2009, and 2011 higher than 2010? 2011's estimate for outlays is over a trillion more than 2007's -- a whopping 40% increase in spending from 4 years earlier. (I don't know what the estimate on inflation for 2010 and 2011 is, but for the four years from 2005 to 2009 it totaled 10.7% -- annual inflation was around 2.6% or so). I'm just talking about what we're spending here, not the deficit or receipts.

I've been trying not to freak over the deficit thing, because I freaked in the 80s when Reagan ran up the deficit and the sky was supposed to fall but never did. But HOLY COW, the average deficit for the 10 years prior to 2009 was about 10% the deficit estimate for 2010. Eep. Okay, I know that comparing 1999 dollars to 2010 dollars is totally not fair, but still ... eep. O_O

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

first, it was Bush who outlayed the 700Billion to the banks. Obama put out another 700Billion to save the auto companies.

Second, the reason the sky didn't fall is because we live with an inflationary economy. One where the govt can print as many dollars as it needs to pay back loans later. Yes, this devalues the dollar worldwide. But that just makes American goods cheaper to the world. It also makes US labor cheaper and outsourcing to China and India more expensive.

the only people it hurts are those of us that face the increasing costs of living without the accompanying pay increase to cover the costs.

[rowyn]

Yes, I noted in my original post that TARP started in 2008 under Bush. It did not fully disburse in 2008; in fact, it still hasn't all been spent (or all been paid back).

The car company bailout was paid for with TARP funds, after Congress amended TARP to allow that. The funds given to car companies total about 78 billion as of September 2009, per the quarterly report on TARP.

[hotspurre.livejournal.com]

Something may either make your more or less anxious. I'm fairly sure the information you got here doesn't include the emergency spending that Bush used to support the war in Iraq. Every year since 2001, our foriegn military spending has been finances by emergency items, and so were not reflected in the actual budget. They were "hid," so to speak. Obama actually put them in the budget, so his deficits are much higher.

[rowyn]

No, I think the numbers I used included everything. The table has a section for actual outlays vs budgeted. Everyone's budgeted numbers are lower than actual -- including, amusingly, the estimated figures for 2010 and 2011 -- presumably because they exclude all the various "emergency appropriations" that are excluded from the budget (whether for political reasons or due to actual emergencies.)

[level-head.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that so-called "emergency" appropriations are still part of the military funding process. Here's an article about the emergency funding bill for the last part of Fiscal Year 2009.

===|==============/ Level Head

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

We could get into a nice argument here if I thought that what was going on was some kind of Keynesian intervention; I don't know if I'm totally down with Keynes, but if we're going to have a state, I think it's inevitably going to stick its fingers into the economy, and when it does so, I'd like it to be more in the interests of the majority of its citizens than not.

But I don't think that's what's happening here. I think the American federal government is getting robbed blind. The robbery is benefiting a fairly small segment of the population at the expense of the majority, and nobody seems to be doing anything to stop it. This is an exceptionally dangerous thing to happen to a state; it sends the signal that the state can be robbed, will facilitate its own predation. John Robb and others refer to this as "hollowing out". I have a bad feeling they're right.

[rowyn]

Why yes, that would be more grim than a Keynesian intervention. O_o

I didn't particularly want to argue with anyone over whether or not we ought to be spending the money. It's just that it's like a trillion more than we were spending in 2007 and if it's not for TARP or stimulus what the heck is it for?

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Maybe we're giving a trillion dollars straight-up to the Chinese in exchange for them a) continuing to buy our T-bills and/or b) not selling off the gigantic pile of US dollars they're sitting on. I doubt it's anything even that shrewd, though.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

From http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/hist.html which has a list of the budget broken down by function and subfunction,

2011 compared to 2007, this is the delta:

$300 billion for 'income security' -- for example, unemployment is doubling in cost
$200 billion for the military
$150 billion for 'social security'
$140 billion for 'health care' -- this does not include the health care bill, it's separate under 'allowances' and is supposedly going to make a profit?
$125 billion for 'medicare'
$50 billion for veteran benefits
$30 billion in transportation, most of it 'ground transportation'
$30 billion for education
$25 billion in 'interest'
$20 billion for 'energy' -- apparently we'll be importing $10 billion more in energy than we used to or something? The rest is 'conservation'.
$20 billion in 'commerce and housing credit' although this looks sort of like 'stuff in here is going to suck' and not an outlay per-se, sort of like half the energy thing.
$15 billion for 'natural resources and environment'
$15 billion for administration of justice
$10 billion for 'general government'
$7.5 billion for 'science and technology'
$7 billion for 'foreign affairs'

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

So unless there's some major *changes* in unemployment, health care, and medicare, I'd interpret this as $700 billion being because they're anticipating the current crisis not entirely wearing off yet by 2011? Therefore causing a greater demand for social services.

And then another $250 billion on the military for some ungodly reason.

And then general pork. >:)

[rowyn]

I'm kinda worried that the increases in Medicare & Social Security have little to do with the crisis and a lot to do with those just getting more expensive every year. :/

[rowyn]

Yay, an answer! :)

Interesting that the military costs are going up so much; I guess the drawdown in Iraq isn't counterbalancing the push in Afghanistan.

note

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

Robert Gates recently assured military contractors that there specific plans to expand procurement year over year for the next decade by significant margins. Smells like pork to me. I mean, we spent 130 billion this last budget on surface vessels. we have people living in tent cities and we're ADDING ships to a fleet that is not aging them into inoperability NEARLY that fast.