Deficits Archives - Brownlee Global: Gratitude to GreatnessBrownlee Global: Gratitude to Greatness

“The time has come for your public servants to bring spending down into line with tax revenues. No matter how much more tax money comes to Washington, it won’t amount to a hill of beans if government won’t curb its endless appetite to spend.” – President Ronald Reagan’s 1985 address

The Department of Health and Human Services takes 25.4% of the total federal fiscal spending due to Medicare and Medicaid costs.

The Social Security Administration makes up about 22.4% of the budget, while the Treasury Department takes up 19.5%.

The Department of Defense accounts for 13.5% of federal fiscal spending, followed by Veterans Affairs at 4.8% and the Department of Education at 4%.

It is widely reported in the media that the U.S. government spends wastefully a significant amount of money annually on unnecessary projects.

According to Senator Rand Paul’s 2024 “Festivus” Report, approximately $1 trillion was identified as wasteful spending in FY2024.

Examples include $4.8 million spent by the U.S. Federal government on Ukrainian influencers and $6 million to promote tourism in Egypt.

Additionally, the Government Accountability Office estimates that between $233 billion and $521 billion is lost annually to fraud and inefficiencies.

Other reports highlight specific waste, such as $20 billion annually on ineffective animal testing and $247 billion wasted in 2023 due to improper payments and inefficiencies (Source: perplexity.ai).

Here are some bizarre examples of government waste (Source: perplexity.ai):
• Massaging Rabbits: The NIH spent $387,000 to provide Swedish massages to rabbits as part of a research project.
• Fish on Treadmills: The National Science Foundation allocated $1.5 million to study the endurance of mudskipper and bluegill fish on treadmills.
• Mountain Lions on Treadmills: Another NSF project spent $856,000 training mountain lions to use treadmills to study their energy use while hunting.
• Responsible Drinking for Chinese Prostitutes: The federal government spent $2.6 million on a campaign to encourage Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.
• Guantanamo Soccer Field: $750,000 was spent to build a soccer field for inmates at Guantanamo Bay.
• IHOP Construction: The Department of Health and Human Services provided $500,000 to build an IHOP in Washington, D.C., ostensibly to create jobs.

“Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax. If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing” – Milton Friedman

Democrats spend money when they don’t raise taxes; and, Republicans cut taxes when they don’t decrease spending. Tax and spending reforms are needed desperately.

“The government has basically three gigantic programs and it’s the US military, Social Security, and Medicare,” Marc Goldwein, a senior policy director at Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) said. As Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman once wrote, the US government is “best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army,” and increasing interest payments.

If the government wants to get serious about its fiscal spending and reducing the national debt, all government spending would have to be reduced by 27% to get budgets balanced in the next decade — and, if tax increases, defense spending, Social Security, and Medicare are all off the table, 78% of federal spending would have to be cut, according to CRFB.

The federal deficit vs. Debt — they’re two separate concepts.

The deficit is the difference between the money that the government makes and the money it spends during a fiscal year. If the government spends more than it collects in revenues, then it’s running a deficit.
The federal debt is the running total of the accumulated deficits.

The combination of spending increases, tax cutsc, and increasing interest expenses on the debt inflates deficits. While the rise in spending tends to be bi-partisan, tax cuts tend to be enacted by Republicans.

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Tag Archives: Deficits

FY2024 Federal Fiscal Spending

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