Part 3: Elderly and Disabled Introduction President Biden’s FY 2022 budget proposes to spend nearly $1.7 trillion over the next ten years on several new or expanded entitlement programs for children, college students, the elderly, and the disabled. The budget…
Introduction In part one of this defense primer, readers learned that the defense budget is a significant portion of the federal budget (about 15% in 2019), approximately 96% of which is Department of Defense spending (the Pentagon’s…
Most Americans know that the defense budget constitutes a substantial portion of federal spending, but there remains plenty of confusion as to just how much. While a quick search can answer that for you (spoiler alert: $714 billion in…
Introduction As debate in Washington continues over how (or whether) to pay for the latest infrastructure plan, someone will inevitably claim it will pay for itself. (1) Such optimism reflects the belief that government spending creates jobs and grows…
Key Takeaways Several times each year, the Congressional Budget Office publishes a baseline – a policy-neutral snapshot of the federal budget meant to inform lawmakers about future trends, such as the sustained imbalance between revenues and spending. Often, the…
Presidential budgets are designed to highlight an administration’s budgetary priorities, how they would affect the economy and how it all adds up. Budgets should be as transparent as possible so that members of Congress, the public and the media…
Two deadlines converge by coincidence this year. They are not related to one another and the precise consequences of failing to deal with them in a timely manner are different. Missing either of the deadlines, however, has the potential to…
Federal spending falls into two basic categories: mandatory spending and discretionary spending. Programs such as Social Security and Medicare, for which benefits are awarded based on pre-determined formulas, are considered mandatory spending because once they are enacted they do not…