FEDERAL SPENDING IS NUTS!

Federal spending has grown out of control and most of it has happened under Bush - I don't know what he has in mind by not stopping this with the veto pen but he never did - the tax cuts help to balance this out but if they die, we are in deep du -


The facts on federal spending
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“Before the nation can come together on federal budget solutions, it has to agree on the basic budget facts,” Heritage budget expert Brian Riedl writes.

To ensure Congress, the media and the American people are aware of these facts, Riedl and others in the domestic policy department at Heritage have pored over the government’s spending data and produced the latest edition of “Federal Spending—By the Numbers.”

The numbers in Riedl’s new report on the budget (link in PDF) are disheartening. Here’s a sampling of the data:
Federal spending has increased by 42% (23% after inflation) since 2001.

Federal spending has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Clinton.
In 2006, inflation-adjusted federal spending topped $23,000 per household for the first time since World War II.
After inflation, spending rose four percent in 2006 over 2005 levels. With the help of the Bush tax cuts, though, economic growth drove an eight percent increase in tax revenues.

It’s worth noting that of these dramatic increases in federal spending, only a third can be attributable to homeland security and national defense, though liberals would have you believe otherwise. Riedl lists some of the large-ticket items that make up the bulk of the increase:

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which is responsible for much of the 129 percent inflation-adjusted increase in education spending from 2001 through 2006;

A 2002 farm bill that pushed annual farm spending to double the levels of the 1990s;

A 2003 Medicare drug entitlement estimated to cost $822 billion in its first ten years and as much as $2 trillion over the following decade;

The 2005 highway bill, which, at $286 billion over six years, is the most expensive highway bill ever; and

Large expansions of outlays for the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.

The long-term picture is grimmer still. In four decades’ time, the big three entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—will consume almost 20 percent of the nation’s economic output without reform. “Without entitlement reform,” Riedl writes, “America will have to choose between France-level tax increases or unprecedented budget cuts.”

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.