Guess What Our Government Is Doing With 600 Billion Dollars

[Yo_Mama]

14. Misinformation in the graph

You can see the outlays planned for this fiscal year in the latest monthly Treasury report:
http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0212.pdf

From largest to smallest major categories:
HHS (Health and Human Services): 871 billion. (Includes Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP)
SSA (Social Security) 827 billion. (SS, DI, SSI)
DOD (Dept of Defense) 688 billion.
Dept of Agriculture 150 billion. (Includes food stamps, WIC = about 42 billion)
VA (Veterans Affaids) 129 billion.
Treasury (other, ex-interest) 129 billion. (IRS mostly)
DOL (Dept of Labor) 127 billion. (Includes training and unemployment benefits)
Dept of Education 98 billion.
OPM (federal government) 87 billion.
Dept of Transportation 84 billion.

There's plenty more, but the numbers drop off pretty hard fpr other categories. Total outlays for this fiscal year are expected to be about 3,795 billion. HHS plus SSA together are about 44% of the budget. DoD is 18%.

Personally I think we should be bailing out of Afghanistan and generally being less aggressive, but the graph is not showing the real budgetary picture. Our total deficit this year is going to be over 1 trillion - we could not spend a penny on DoD this year and still have a very substantial budget deficit. So far this year we have paid 191 billion on the national debt in interest. About half of the 450 billion figure is in reality not paid at all - that's interest credited in a book transaction to all the trust funds - SS, DI, HI, federal retirements, etc.