How Your Tax Dollars Are Spent
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Federal government collects approximately $2.7 trillion in tax revenues-- give or take a couple hundred billion or so, depending on the economy, corporate profits and Wall Street and of course, how honest everyone filing a return is.
Do you wonder what your tax dollars buy? The answer might surprise you. In theory, at least, the White House and Congress work together -- or battle it out -- to decide how to divvy up every dollar paid to the federal government. In fact, most of it is already as good as spent.
About 70 percent of the annual budget pays for commitments already incurred -- everything from Social Security benefits to interest on the national debt. Neither President nor Congress has much say over that.
- The biggest single chunk of that so-called nondiscretionary spending -- more than 20 percent of the total budget -- is used to pay Social Security benefits to existing retirees.
- Approximately another 15 percent pays the tab for Medicare health benefits.
- Approximately an additional 7 percent goes for Medicaid
- Approximately 3 percent for veterans benefits
- Approximately 1.3 percent for supplemental security income used to assist the aged, disabled and blind
- Approximately another 16 percent of the budget is used to pay All types of aid to the needy -- Medicaid, housing subsidies, aid to poor families with children (welfare, which accounts for about 1 percent of the budget), food stamps, school lunches and so on, plus unemployment benefits
In fact, all government payments to individuals amount to about 62 percent of the budget. And the percentage continues to climb.
- Interest on the national debt claims was about 10 percent of the budget. But the deficits have pushed the national debt closer to $10+ trillion today
Now we have about 72 percent of the budget spend.
- The military gets the biggest piece of what's left -- about 20 percent of the budget called discretionary spending because it's the part of the budget that Congress and the White House can control from year to year
- The last 8 percent of Uncle Sam's budget pays for everything else: Transportation -- federal highways and bridges, support for Amtrak, funds to help states with other roads, bridges, railroads, airports, science and medical research - , Food and drug safety, Guarding the environment, The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Export promotion, Import protections, Space exploration, Air traffic controllers, The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the rest of the Justice Department, Federal education funding, And an alphabet soup of federal agencies tasked with helping to keep Americans safe, healthy and, sad to say, honest -- from the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) to the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)
Reference: Yahoo Finance. How Your Tax Dollars are Spent.
