So that's why they never fix the federal budget...

  I don't normally pay much attention to politics or news--

  And like any sane person I've made it a policy to ignore the awful stench emanating from the so called 'news' channels(Fox,CNN, and pretty much any american news channel), but the Japanese earthquake and the recent explosion of rebellions in the middle east has sparked my temporary interest, although I try to stick to more reliable and less commercially soaked sources such as NPR, BBC.  Another interesting source is Al Jazeera which is generally good but sometimes has some very Fox News style innuendos, but with a anti-Western bend.

 So the US has entered Lybia for yet another war, and people are complaining about the cost of the war and the federal deficit.

 Isn't it interesting that each new politicians always seems to claim they have a plan to fix the deficit, but when elected, nothing ever gets fixed?

 So.. why is that?

  Actually it is really obvious as to why, and anyone involved in financial aspects of the government probably knows exactly what the problem is, and exactly how it could be fixed.  They are just helpless to actually enact any of these plans.

 Here are the major expenditures in descending order.

1 - $695 billion (+4.9%) – Social Security
2 - $663.7 billion (+12.7%) – Department of Defense
3 - $571 billion (−15.2%) -  Discretionary (Much of this is just more Defense related stuff)
4 - $453 billion (+6.6%) – Medicare
5 - $290 billion (+12.0%) – Medicaid


And in chart form...

With a large drop-off after these five, and besides, together these five constitute 80% of the entire federal budget!


 One thing that isn't clearly from this chart is that the Defense budget is actually closer to 40-50% of the entire federal budget!

 See the section labeled Discretionary, well much of that goes to extra defense related programs such as Veteran Affairs($70b), Homeland Security($47b), Veterans Pensions($54.6b), International Affairs($5-$63b), and many others.

 The total for defense related expenditures is an amazing:  $1,030 - $1,415 trillion

 Now common sense says if you want to fix the budget, you start where you can make the largest gains.

To fix the budget all you have to do is reduce payments to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Department of Defense, and presto-magic budget = fixed.

 But wouldn't you know it-- these are the exact places the public won't let politicians make any changes too.

-Old farts don't want to see their precious Medicare & Medicaid & Social Security go away-- any politician who tries it would be quickly removed.  And the old fart population is just growing...

-Republicans have a hard-on for anything military, so cutting the Defense Department never flies with them.


 So basically, nothing gets fixed because the people lack the will to actually let anything be fixed.

Meanwhile this lovely bit:

6 - $164 billion (+18.0%) – Interest on National Debt

 Just keeps growing :)



Source for budget:
US Federal Budget
2010 US Federal Budget
US Military Budget