« Quotational Therapy: Part 72 -- Protesting The Olympics. | WILLisms.com | The Liberal Lexicon »

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 265 -- Spending Increases High, Revenue Increases Higher.

Booming Government Revenues-

"Spending is out of control! And it's getting worse every year!"

Okay, great. Duh. We know.

"It's the pork! We've got to end the pork!"

Okay, great. Sort of. Can we start classifying entitlements as pork?

Amazingly, thus far in Fiscal Year 2006 (which actually started a few months ago), the U.S. government is taking in much more revenue than it did last year. And last year, it took in far more than the year before.

Incredibly, even with all that crazy spending we all talk about ad nauseum, and all those crazy spending increases, revenue increases have actually outpaced spending increases.

The government is rich. It's too rich. It's too easy to keep spending when revenue keeps flooding in. There's no government-cutting urgency because of all of this additional tax revenue. There's no "let's-do-this-now" impetus for reforming entitlements, because the government is awash in cashola. Sure, deficits persist, but they are getting smaller, WITHOUT EVEN CUTTING SPENDING.

It's more a little frustrating. But let's keep it factual, here.

First, revenue growth is outpacing spending growth (.pdf):

Once again, the largest items thus far in Fiscal Year 2006 (which, remember, started in October, not at the beginning of the actual year) are (.pdf):

#1: Social Security - $178,738,000,000
#2: National Defense - $170,725,000,000
#3: Income security - $105,355,000,000
#4: Medicare - $98,816,000,000
#5: Health - $84,731,000,000

What percentage of Americans would be able to identify Social Security as the most expensive government program?

What percentage, meanwhile, would erroneously identify "pork" or "the war" or "welfare" or "schools" as the most expensive program?

If Americans were aware of these facts, I have no doubt whatsoever that they would demand immediate action on entitlement reform.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Race & Medicine.

Posted by Will Franklin · 11 February 2006 01:32 PM

Comments

Posted by: thomas at February 13, 2006 01:47 PM