A little help please with some budget numbers...

[gmoney]

Someone was trying to tell me that the largest part of the budget goes to welfare programs, not counting SS or Medicare, and that it even overshadows the defense budget. As his "source" he gave me a link to this Jeff Sessions talking point statement that has virtually NO actual data in it.

http://www.budget.senate.gov/republican/public/index.cfm/files/serve/?File_id=34919307-6286-47ab-b114-2fd5bcedfeb5

I've tried googling, but not sure where to find reliable information on how the budget is broken down item by item. The best thing I found was this: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_pie but it's not a gummint site, so hard to argue too strongly for it.

Any good sources for this type of info? Links please? Thanks!

[elleng]

1. Here's a pie chart:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_pie

'Health care' probably includes medicare and medicaid.

[gmoney]

6. That's the pie chart I linked!

Thanks though.

[elleng]

17. OOps!

Sorry!

[ND-Dem]

2. How does your friend define 'welfare programs'? Like, are veterans benefits 'welfare'? or does he

just mean afdc? or what, exactly?

if you know what programs he was talking about, you can get the total spending at Wikipedia I think and compare it to the total federal budget.

[gmoney]

4. The Sessions memo lists 83 programs it considers welfare

Looking up each one and doing the math is a little daunting. A lot of them are health programs, and stuff I would not consider "welfare" but I guess technically would be government assistance, like Pell Grants.

A list of all 83 federal welfare programs examined by CRS follows:
 Family Planning
 Consolidated Health Centers
 Transitional Cash and Medical Services for Refugees
 State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
 Voluntary Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit—Low-Income Subsidy
 Medicaid
 Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program
 Breast/Cervical Cancer Early Detection
 Maternal and Child Health Block Grant
 Indian Health Service
 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (cash aid)
 Supplemental Security Income
 Additional Child Tax Credit
 Earned Income Tax Credit (refundable component)
 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
 School Breakfast Program (free/reduced price components)
 National School Lunch Program (free/reduced price components)
 Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)
 Child and Adult Care Food Program (lower income components)
 Summer Food Service Program
 Commodity Supplemental
 Food Program Nutrition Assistance for Puerto Rico
 The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP)
 Nutrition Program for the Elderly
 Indian Education
 Adult Basic Education Grants to States
 Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant
 Education for the Disadvantaged— Grants to Local Educational Agencies (Title I-A)
 Title I Migrant Education Program
 Higher Education—Institutional Aid and Developing Institutions
 Federal Work-Study
 Federal TRIO Programs
 Federal Pell Grants
 Education for Homeless Children and Youth
 21st Century Community Learning Centers
 Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEARUP)

On edit: Forgot page 2
 Reading First and Early Reading First
 Rural Education Achievement Program
 Mathematics and Science Partnerships
 Improving Teacher Quality State Grants
 Academic Competitiveness and Smart Grant Program
 Single-Family Rural Housing Loans
 Rural Rental Assistance Program
 Water and Waste Disposal for Rural Communities
 Public Works and Economic Development
 Supportive Housing for the Elderly
 Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities
 Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance
 Community Development Block Grants
 Homeless Assistance Grants
 Home Investment Partnerships Program (HOME)
 Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA)
 Public Housing
 Indian Housing Block Grants
 Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers
 Neighborhood Stabilization Program-1
 Grants to States for Low-Income Housing in Lieu of Low-Income Housing Credit Allocations
 Tax Credit Assistance Program
 Indian Human Services
 Older Americans Act Grants for Supportive Services and Senior Centers
 Older Americans Act Family Caregiver Program
 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (social services)
 Child Support Enforcement
 Community Services Block Grant
 Child Care and Development Fund
 Head Start HHS
 Developmental Disabilities Support and Advocacy Grants
 Foster Care
 Adoption Assistance
 Social Services Block Grant
 Chafee Foster Care Independence Program
 Emergency Food and Shelter Program
 Legal Services Corporation
 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (employment and training component)
 Community Service Employment for Older Americans
 Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Adult Activities
 Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Youth Activities
 Social Services and Targeted Assistance for Refugees
 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (employment and training)
 Foster Grandparents
 Job Corps
 Weatherization Assistance Program
 Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)

[ND-Dem]

7. since when is indian education welfare? it's no different than education generally -- is that

also welfare?

work study is welfare?

institutional aid to higher ed is welfare?

breast cancer early detection?

what the hell is CRS?

[gmoney]

8. This is Jeff Sessions' list, not mine.

I agree, public health and education really shouldn't be considered "welfare" even in the broadest terms.

[Enthusiast]

12. We know Jeff Sessions to be a racist asshole. So there is that.

[gmoney]

9. CRS = "Congressional Research Service" supposedly non-partisan

Ranking Member Sessions and the minority staff of the Senate Budget Committee requested from the
nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) an overview of cumulative means-tested federal
welfare spending in the United States in the most recent year for which data is available (fiscal year 2011).
The results are staggering. CRS identified 83 overlapping federal welfare programs that together
represented the single largest budget item in 2011—more than the nation spends on Social Security,
Medicare, or national defense. The total amount spent on these 80-plus federal welfare programs
amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion. Importantly, these figures solely refer to means-tested welfare benefits.
They exclude entitlement programs to which people contribute (e.g., Social Security and Medicare).
CRS estimates that exclusively federal spending on these federal programs equaled approximately $746
billion, and further emphasizes that there is a substantial amount of state spending—mostly required as a
condition of states’ participation—on these same federal programs (primarily Medicaid and CHIP). Based
on data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Oxford Handbook of State and Local
Government Finance, Budget Committee staff calculated at least an additional $283 billion in state
contributions to those same federal programs, for a total annual expenditure of $1.03 trillion. By
comparison, in 2011, the annual budget expenditure for Social Security was $725 billion, Medicare was
$480 billion, and non-war defense was $540 billion.

The exclusively federal share of spending on these federal programs is up 32 percent since 2008, and now
comprises 21 percent of federal outlays (this share too is more than Social Security, Medicare, or defense).

[TreasonousBastard]

11. Have some fun by dividing that trillion...

by, say, 100,000,000-- roughly the lower third of the US population by income.

Lotta money per person, eh? You start to wonder where all of it is going, if this is true.

[jtuck004]

13. Are the hundreds of thousands of dollars Joni Ernst's family got from taxpayers on this list?

I suspect the new contracts the family is getting since she got some political clout won't count, but they raked in enough to buy an entire bakery full of bread bags, and a really, really nice farm before that. It's just a cursory read, but damn...

[PoliticAverse]

3. For 2013 (from cbo.gov):

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/45278

[gmoney]

5. Thank you... funny how it adds up...

Surprised the Defense portion is "only" $626 Billion.

But yes, this is what I was looking for. I appreciate the link.

[Scuba]

16. Note that in that chart military retirement and vets benefits are carved out from defense spending.

Note also that Homeland Security does not appear on the chart. Comparison with other analysis indicates it's not lumped into defense either. It's probably considered welfare by whoever put this misleading chart together.

[SheilaT]

10. Keep in mind that none of the offcial budge figures

include "black box" spending, which is trillions of dollars outside of any official spending, but would generally be included under military.

Here's another way to think about the spending. In most states, the bulk of the spending is for education. In my opinion, that is as it should be. But the battles at the state level should be looked at, and compared to the federal levels.

[JHB]

14. This has been a rhetorical switcheroo for decades

Conservatives would throw out big scary numbers about how large a portion of the Federal budget went to entitlements (which includes SocSec and Medicare), then rail against "welfare" -- never mentioning that assistance/relief programs were always a small portion compared to the SolSec/Medicare portions. This left the audience with the impression that assistance programs were an enormous portions of the budget (and going to lazy, shiftless, you-know-whos-wink-wink) to fuel anti-government sentiment.

Hard to do that if you're honest with the numbers and people are left thinking "oh, it that all?"

[JaneyVee]

15. He has a problem with healthcare spending?