I figured out a few days ago the difference between Mandatory and Discretionary Spending. At the time it didn’t sound like there were a lot of Mandatory spending. However, reading this about.com article, it seems there are dozens of them:
- Social Security – $730 billion
- Medicare – $491 billion
- Medicaid – $297 billion
- TARP – $11 billion
- Jobs Programs – $25 billion
- Health Care Reform – Budget reduction of $17 billion
- All other mandatory programs – $619 billion. These programs include Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Child Nutrition and Tax Credits, Supplemental Security for the Disabled and Student Loans.
It’s that “All Other mandatory programs” category that I’m interested in. If so-called “Mandatory” spending programs are over half of our budget, I need to find a list of every single one of them to figure out where the federal government is spending all it’s money.
I did some more searching and I had no idea the list of Mandatory spending was so huge. The list below is from a chart from the CBO(Congressional Budget Office). It is the most complete list I could find of all Mandatory Spending program that existed as of FY2009. It is in no particular order
- Social Security
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- SNAP(supplemental nutrition assistance Program)
- Unemployment Compensation
- Supplemental Security Income.
- Earned income and child tax credits
- Family support
- Child nutrition
- Foster care
- Making Work Pay
- First-Time Homebuyer Credit
- The American Opportunity Tax Credit
- Acceleration of Research and Experimentation Tax Credits in lieu of bonus depreciation
- Payments made when the credit for the AMT exceeds a taxpayer’s liability
- Income tax rebates that result from the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008(Public Law 110-185) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(P.L. 111-5)
- Military Retirement Fund
- Federal Civilian Retirement Fund
- Other Retirement(???? I don’t know that this is)
- Veterans Income Security(veteran’s compensation, pensions, and life insurance)
- Veterans Other(education subsidies)
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
- TARP(The Bank Bailout)
- Agriculture(In the future I’d like to make this category a little more granular)
- MERHCF (???? I’m not sure what this is. I tried to google it and only got more confused. It has something to do with medical care and the military.
- Higher Education
- Universal Service Fund
- CHIP
- Social Services
- Deposit Insurance
Finally, at the very end, the chart has an “Other” category. Other(I really hate constantly finding this category)- Being that, according to the chart, this category accounts for 32 billion in spending, I’d like to know more of where it’s going. I’m going to see if I can figure out more details. I can’t believe that it’s so hard to figure out where 32 billion dollars of federal mandates is going.
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