What is the biggest contributor to the national debt?

[Klukie]

I am so confused. I am looking at all these graphs and reading all these articles and my head is spinning. I want to know what is the biggest item on average that has caused federal budget deficits through the years.

[yourout]

1. Two pieces in my view. War and tax cuts for the rich.

[wtmusic]

2. 1. Defense 2. Interest on the national debt.

Sad but true.

[JuniperLea]

6. Yep...

Mostly it's this Bush warring that was supposed to pay for itself... which is why he set it out on its own budget... and then Obama put it back in with the rest so we could see the reality.

If we cut defense spending, and got back to the military being self-sufficient instead of pouring all that defense money into outside support vendors, we'd save billions.

[mike_c]

10. +1-- Obama's wars of aggression and our involuntary service to the rich and powerful....

Don't forget that the largest single factor in the creation of that debt was military and MIC spending, too. We are about to experience the pain formerly felt by Soviet citizens as their cost of military empire pulled their nation into the dustbin.

[Mimosa]

25. ^ ITA with you Mike ^

The beat goes on though the Bush is gone...

[immoderate]

3. Military and wars.

Money spent on weapons is a negative multiplier on the economy. The goods and services it represents are subtracted from normal circulation. You build a tank, if it's not used, its money down the hole. If it is, it's destruction of assets, lives and economies. If you build a bulldozer, it's jobs, infrastructure and commerce. You make roads, parks, communites, and factories.

War also leads to long term expensive obligations, such as to the wounded, who not only are removed from participation, but become a burden on their families and communities. Being dead is not any better, but less expensive. We are still paying off the Vietnam War, the maiden heist of the military industrial complex.

--imm

[rgbecker]

5. Very well stated analysis. Thanks.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. Two wars,. Unfunded tax cuts.

That's been the problem the last ten years or so. IMO.

[jp11]

7. The policies of our country for the last oh 30 years or so.

Military spending that not only jacks up our debt but robs other programs, lowering taxes for the rich over and over, zero effective tax rates for corporations, 'free money' and other giveaways for corporations that the tax payers foot the bill for.

To some extent lowering taxes for the average person while their wages have stagnated for decades, where if they had gotten real raises they wouldn't have needed tax breaks and our country would have more money from their higher wages to do things for the betterment of our nation and people barring wars like Iraq/Afghanistan.

[jtown1123]

8. Bush Tax Cuts, Rising health care costs, and the recession (massive unemployment)

[jakeXT]

9. a couple of articles on debt

http://michael-hudson.com/category/debt/


THE LOST TRADITION OF BIBLICAL DEBT CANCELLATIONS
http://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HudsonLostTradition.pdf

[shraby]

11. The Republican congresscritters..nuff said.

[toddwv]

12. The "defense" budget is the largest contributor to the national debt by far.

Especially if you remove Social Security and Medicare from the general outlays. They shouldn't be included there anyways because SS and associated programs are covered by a TRUST fund.

Interest on the debt is staggering. The Republicans handed over the budget in 2006 and the interest on the debt was over $400,000,000,000 a year! Anyone who understands compounding interest understands that that is pretty much like handing over a race horse after you break one of its legs. To be fair, it was $300,000,000,000 a year when the Republicans took over Congress in 1995.

So I think that the first thing that should be done is to raise the top marginal tax rate back up to 65% and pay off the debt as cuts are made. We could cut $400,000,000,000 from the "defense" budget and still be spending twice as much as the next 4 countries COMBINED!

This would have the additional affect of lowering our petroleum consumption because the US military is the single largest consumer of oil on the planet. Would prices follow? Probably not because, as most of us know, we no longer live in a supply/demand paradigm economically speaking.

http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

[dkofos]

13. DOD & Tax cuts

[taught_me_patience]

14. Right now it is the military

In time, it will be medicare. Medicare will be a huge black hole problem in the future.

[deaniac21]

15. Here is the breakdown.

[Klukie]

16. I am confused here..

how did the government spend 700 billion on social security?

[deaniac21]

20. They wrote checks.

[Klukie]

21. I guess what I meant was ....

how is it considered spending when the revenues are collected via a specific tax for the program.

[jakeXT]

24. money has been taken out and the government has to pay interest

How much money is "borrowed" from the Social Security fund by other government entities? What are these entities? How much interest do they pay and under which administration did this practice start?
Robert L Wheeler
Kelso, Wash.

ANSWER: The Treasury Department "borrows" surpluses in the Social Security trust funds for use across the federal government. As a practical matter, the amount of money borrowed equals the balances in the trust funds after benefits are paid out.
Two funds exist: one for disability benefits and a much larger one for retirement benefits. The surplus in those funds at the end of fiscal 2007 (Sept. 30, 2007) was about $2.2 trillion, all in non-marketable U.S. Treasury bonds.
The bonds now earn about 5 percent interest. Last year the government paid $110 billion in interest to the trust funds.
This practice began in 1937 with the creation of the Social Security system during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. That first year the government paid $2 million in interest on money it borrowed from the retirement trust fund.

http://www.dcourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=74&SubSectionID=589&ArticleID=54771&TM=42596

[jtown1123]

27. They didn't. SS has a dedicated revenue stream. It shouldn't be in that pie chart

[deaniac21]

28. LOL

[sakabatou]

17. The Bush Tax Cuts and the wars

[lpbk2713]

18. The corrupt and evil BushCo Regime.

But I gather we aren't supposed to know that.
Otherwise they would all be in jail by now. :eyes:

[WatsonT]

19. The difference between what we bring in

and what we spend. Also interest.

By my reckoning those have accounted for 95% (+/-5%) of our entire debt. (p <.05)

[Klukie]

22. yeah but what did we overspend on?

[WatsonT]

23. Depends on your definition

we also could have been said to under-collect.

Going by what 99% of people say: we over-spend on projects they don't use, under-spend on projects they do use, and under-collect from everyone who isn't them.

Which is why we're in this mess.

[WatsonT]

31. More specifically

the military is the most obvious one. I'd like to see us work on removing ourselves from foreign conflicts and foreign military obligations and move our troops home. All the while working to reduce the overall size down to a more workable amount and focusing on research and intelligence.

I would also push for reductions in foreign financial commitments.

And of course there are a thousand little cuts that can be made in various budgets that wouldn't affect the overall effectiveness of those programs but would yield a hefty savings.

Legalizing marijuana would be a major saver as well as potential revenue source.

We ought to remove the cap on taxable income for social security to keep that in the black.

That's not a comprehensive list. Just off the top of my head.

[Blue_In_AK]

26. The bloated military, in my opinion,

not just the wars but the unnecessary bases around the world. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[RandomThoughts]

29. The desire to have deficits to move money by interest payments to those with assets.

[Forkboy]

30. Does Charlie Sheen pay for his own coke and hookers?