It does not seem to matter which party is in charge, nor what’s going on in the economy, federal government spending just keeps racing ahead.
When Republicans were basically running both Congress and the White House, federal outlays rose rapidly year after year from FY2002 through FY2007.
Now we have a Democratic Congress and a Republican White House. What is divided government giving us so far in FY2008? The Congressional Budget Office’s “Monthly Budget Review” published early this month showed the following for FY2008 from October through May compared to the same period last year:
• Total outlays (adjusted for timing on certain payments) rose by 8.1 percent.
• Defense outlays up 10.3 percent.
• Outlays for net interest on public debt up 3.6 percent.
• Outlays on non-defense programs up 9.6 percent.
By the way, while spending careens out of control, the dramatic economic slowdown is being reflected in federal revenues growing by a mere 0.3 percent so far in FY2008, with corporate income tax revenue growth registering -15.8 percent and individual income tax receipts up by only 0.3 percent.
That’s the current fiscal/economic picture – no-growth economy while politicians just keep on spending.
2 comments:
why is it, when a politician wants to cut government spending, the first thing they want to do is cut things like libraries, school programs, programs for our seniors.oh yes,and "fix" social security and medicare.
if ronald regan had not robbed the ss fund to balance his budget, "fixing" social security would not be needed. if we were told the truth about the real state of our economy by greenspan and ran government spending like a real business we would not have to cut programs we need!file for bankruptcy and reorganise. businesses do it all the time so do other countries.
I find it very interesting when people talk about out of control federal spending during the Bush administration, yet rarely do I ever hear anyone mention the fact the a new cabinet level department was created (DHS) and the fact that we lost a major city due to a hurricane during this period of time.
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