Last Decade, 65 Percent of Federal Expenditures Went to Pay for Entitlements

Last Decade, 65 Percent of Federal Expenditures Went to Pay for Entitlements

Daniel Halper
Weekly Standard
May 26, 2012

A striking chart showing that, over the last decade, 65 percent of federal expenditures went to pay for entitlement commitments, not wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense, or national security:



"About 65 percent of federal expenditures over the last ten years have gone towards entitlements," Paul Miller writes. "By comparison, about 15 percent has gone towards national defense, excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq has cost three percent, and only about one percent has gone towards the war in Afghanistan (including the cost of ongoing military operations and all reconstruction and stabilization assistance combined), according to my analysis of figures from OMB."

In other words, Miller says, "Afghanistan is the second-cheapest major war in U.S. history as a percentage of GDP, according to the Congressional Research Service."

More ammo to use against liberals who say Iraq broke the budget.

The only reason those arguments work is because the public is so ignorant of the truth.

That would be thanks to the MSM and government schools.

By the way, any way you could fix those links in the story?

dblboggie wrote:By the way, any way you could fix those links in the story?

What's wrong with them? They look and work fine.

Here they are in order of appearance;

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/05/22/obama_s_legacy_on_afghanistan

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/hist.pdf

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

Good find.

Don't know why, but just look like code. I doubt it's my phone as it's a an Android smartphone.

But thanks for the links.

dblboggie wrote:Don't know why, but just look like code. I doubt it's my phone as it's a an Android smartphone.

But thanks for the links.

It probably displays differently on that thing for some reason. It looks as it should from here.

I know this has nothing to do with the “cost” of the items listed but it should be noted that even though the wars cost less then the government assistance programs, those programs are needed because not everybody is lucky enough to be employed.
The wars are another story. Even if they were to cost two pennies total, they are totally useless and unwarranted.

What’s a bigger waste:
Paying 30 dollars for something you do need or paying 2 dollars for something you never needed?