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.

[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.

[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.

[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'