Ezra Klein: Link of the Day: Death and Taxes Edition

March 17, 2006

Link of the Day: Death and Taxes Edition

Death_and_taxes This guy has spent years creating a graphical representation of where our discretionary spending goes to. As you might expect, an appalling amount of it funds the military, but even I was surprised by how much, comparatively, that appalling amount really adds up to And remember: Social Security and Medicare are not funded out of income taxes, but out of payroll taxes, so they're not included in the chart. I think it's a bit of a dodge to say Congress lacks authority over them, so watch out for that. Nevertheless, it's a mightily impressive piece of work, and you can see a large version here.

March 17, 2006 | Permalink

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Comments

Great site. However, in the main part the author states "However, when the White House releases it's budget pie graph it includes manditory expenditures such as Social Security and Medicare. This is misleading because Congress has no control over mandatory expenditures."

Really? Congress has control over every expenditure. These are just on 'automatic' unless Congress intervenes. Now, if the White House included these expenditures, but not the revenues from payroll taxes, I would agree it is misleading. If they included both the payroll taxes as well as these expenditures, I would surmise that this guy is the one doing the misleading by only including what he wishes in order to bolster a desired outcome, and that outcome appears to be anti-military.

Posted by: Fred Jones | Mar 17, 2006 2:56:29 PM

This is really cool, though misleading in some places. For instance, the FDA performs clinical trials for a lot of pharmeceuticals. Thanks to the FDA User Fee Act (or something like that), drug manufacturers must pay for them. So, it's not "your money" in that sense.

... I'm shocked that we only spend $1B annually on Voc-Ed.

... why does this list so many agencies as not part of larger departments? Why isn't the NRC part of the Energy Department? Why aren't the SEC and CSPC part of Commerce? Why is the NLRB not in the Labor Department? The only thing I can think of is that these are small but important offices within larger otherwise less important agencies. Or they came into existence before the agency, and convinced their creator that they should have a separate channel to the WH.

Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Mar 17, 2006 3:27:39 PM

Military spending isn't apalling, defending the country from foreign threats is the federal government's #1 job.

What is appalling is that when you take out the military, spending for the poor, Social Security and Medicare and scientific research, you've got a heck of a lot of special interest spending, corporate welfare, and pork.

Posted by: Adam Herman | Mar 18, 2006 3:04:06 AM

You're kinda leading with your chin, here, Adam.
How much of this military budget do you really think applies to pure defence as opposed to operations outside the country ?

Posted by: opit | Mar 18, 2006 1:18:25 PM

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