Was reading a passage from this Thomas Friedman book (remember him?) and a number stunned me:
One thing we must not do is try to bring the budget back toward balance by making most, let alone all, of the spending cuts in “nonsecurity discretionary spending” — the 12 percent of the budget that does not include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and interest on the national debt. That is the part of the budget where all the education, innovation, and infrastructure programs, essential to our formula for prosperity, reside.
If this is correct – and a quick glance at the Treasury’s official data confirms this or worse – it means only 12% of America’s federal budget is spent on forward looking programs. Programs like education, infrastructure, job training, technology innovation, and environmental protection.
Of course the defense category (currently also 12%) goes both ways, but much of that investment – especially in recent decades – has been wasted on questionable foreign conflict (cough Iraq).
Most everything else – Medicare, Social Security, interest payments – is essentially backwards looking. Paying IOUs. Much of it is justified, but if you were running a business, would you really only invest 12% to secure your future prosperity? If you earned $10K a month, how would it feel if almost $9K and growing were spent just to pay the bills?
Ok, rant over :)