Advocates for Social Welfare Benefits Turn the Truth About Federal Spending on Its Head
…though inflation-adjusted federal spending is currently 15% higher than it was before the recession, and social benefits comprise a greater portion of federal spending than ever recorded in the nation’s…
Read moreSocial Security Has Been Boosted, Not Looted
…the Social Security Historian’s Office, “the financing procedures involving the Social Security program have not changed in any fundamental way since they were established in the original Social Security Act…
Read moreEverything You’ve Heard About the Debt Limit is Wrong
…it illegal to spend Social Security taxes on any program other than Social Security. Furthermore, the 2022 Social Security Trustees Report states: The Social Security Act prohibits payments from the…
Read moreWhat Portion of the Federal Budget Is Spent on the Military?
…total spending.” The truth is that all military spending—including the Pentagon budget, veterans benefits, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—accounted for 22% of total federal spending in 2010. So…
Read moreEconomy Declined as Government Spending Rose
…is merely a subset of government spending that excludes 69% of all federal spending and 20% of all state and local spending. As BEA explains in its “Primer on Government…
Read moreAOC’s Baseless Accusation That the U.S. Is a “Brutal, Barbarian Society”
…of $23,050 in social benefits to every household in the United States. The federal government defines these as “payments from social insurance funds, such as social security and Medicare, and…
Read moreFederal Government’s 2017 Fiscal Shortfall Is 74% Worse Than Reported Budget Deficit
…bulk of current and impending federal debt is due to increased spending on social programs like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and food stamps. Such programs have grown from 21% of…
Read moreFact-Based Poll Reveals Fictions Believed by Voters
…missile defense? Correct Answer: Social programs. In 2010, 61% of federal spending was on social programs, versus 22% for national defense. Fifty years ago, the opposite was true, and 53%…
Read morePoll Reveals Voters are Uninformed About Major Issues
…taxes to spending, suppose we broke down all government spending to a per-household cost. Do you think the combined spending of federal, state and local governments amounts to more or…
Read morePoll Reveals Voters Misinformed About Key Issues
…on national defense, such as the Army, Navy, and missile defense? Correct Answer: Social programs. In 2010 (later data not available), 61% of federal spending was on social programs, versus…
Read morePre-Election Poll: Voters Broadly Misinformed About Key Issues
…taxes to spending, suppose we broke down all government spending to a per household cost – do you think the combined spending of federal, state and local governments amounts to…
Read moreReporters Distort the Truth About Government Spending
…that state and local government spending expanded faster than the rate of inflation. Likewise, if government spending is measured as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product, state and…
Read moreFederal Fiscal Shortfall Nears $1 Million Per Household
…military spending are to blame for the runaway national debt, the primary cause is greater spending on social programs which provide healthcare, income security, education, nutrition, housing, and cultural services….
Read moreFederal Fiscal Shortfall Surges Past $100 Trillion
…reflected in the national debt. Social Security & Medicare A similar situation exists with social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare because—contrary to popular belief—these programs don’t save workers’…
Read moreTaking Social Security Off-Budget
…program.” As a matter of fact, taking Social Security off-budget doesn’t change the finances of the program by a single penny. Per the U.S. Social Security Administration, “whether the Trust…
Read moreTreasury Data Reveals Federal Shortfall of $614,000 per U.S. Household
…programs like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and food stamps. Such programs have grown from 20% of federal spending in 1960 to 61% of federal spending in 2014. Under current laws…
Read moreWhat the $20 Trillion National Debt Means to You
…slightly, but spending has risen more: Since 1959, the composition of federal spending has changed dramatically. Spending on social programs (like income security, healthcare, education, and housing) has risen from…
Read moreSocial Ills That Plague African Americans Coincide With Leftism, Not Racism
…declining racism and rising levels of political and social power held by minorities. In contrast, there are very strong associations between these scourges and leftist public policies and mindsets. Because…
Read moreNew Treasury Data Shows Federal Shortfall of $670,000 Per U.S. Household
…are slightly worse: The vast bulk of current and impending federal debt is due to increased spending on social programs like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and food stamps. Such programs…
Read moreThe “Inflation Reduction Act” Will Do Almost Nothing That Joe Manchin Says It Will
…two years ago, Manchin, Schumer, and nearly all Democrats voted for: the “American Rescue Plan,” which enacted $1.9 trillion in deficit spending mainly devoted to social welfare programs and bailouts…
Read moreThe Costs and Savings of Changing Social Security to a Personal Ownership System
By James D. Agresti November 25, 2011 During the recent one-on-one debate between Newt Gingrich and Hermann Cain, Gingrich said, “If you take it off-budget, you could solve Social Security….
Read moreHow Hard and Effectively do Americans Work?
…Clinton. He wrote that “government assistance programs” provide people with “an incentive, and the means, not to work.” In recent years, spending on government assistance programs, technically called “social benefits,”…
Read moreThe Impact of Obamacare and Ryancare on Medicare
…contradict each other. At the root of this debate are some harsh realities about government spending on healthcare. Mandatory federal healthcare programs, which are those that can spend taxpayer money…
Read moreAre Today’s Newborns the Luckiest Generation in U.S. History?
…spending on several major social programs will increase substantially over the coming decades. This includes Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the insurance exchanges created by Obamacare. Due to the design…
Read moreWarren Buffett’s Fraudulent Tax Claims (Part 2)
…government spending, which is a broader measure of government’s economic footprint, averaged 22% of the economy in the 1950s versus 33% over the past ten years—a 50% increase. As the…
Read moreObama’s Plan for Tackling the Deficit
…and going back to Reagan-era tax rates are also part of the CBO’s current policy scenario. In this scenario, spending on all government functions but mandatory healthcare, Social Security, and…
Read moreBlame for the National Debt
…components of these increased expenditures and reduced revenues? Here again, we have clarity. With regard to expenditures, a rapidly increasingly share of federal spending has gone to social programs (such…
Read moreCan We Prevent a Debt-Driven Economic Collapse Without Reforming Entitlements?
…doctors. These Medicare cuts will increase in subsequent years and then be deepened by Medicare cuts in the Affordable Care Act. • spending on all federal programs but Social Security…
Read moreKrugman and Obama Mislead on Debts and Deficits
…factors “will substantially boost federal spending on Social Security and the government’s major health care programs, relative to GDP, for the next 10 years and for decades thereafter.” Regarding these…
Read moreThe National Debt Is Rising—Not Declining
…addressed through drastically reduced government spending. For example, by 1951, federal debt was already 11% lower than our current debt, and federal spending was consuming 27% less of our economy…
Read moreA Factual Look at Obama’s Presidency
…19.3%: Composition of Federal Spending Between 2009 and 2015, the portion of federal spending devoted to social programs increased from 61% to 63%. During the same period, the portion devoted…
Read moreThe New York Times Regularly Publishes Falsehoods That Spur Violent Unrest and Civic Dysfunction
…disproportionately from police brutality.” Disproven by facts from the academic journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the left-leaning Center for Policing Equity. “Many police…
Read moreHas Government Turned Us Into a Nation of Makers and Takers?
…benefits, and increases in life expectancy that have raised spending on Social Security and Medicare. Accordingly, during the past half century, social programs have consumed a rising share of the…
Read moreThe Real “Big Money” in Politics
…CNBC recently reported, in just the past several years: Billionaire Salesforce founder Marc Benioff bought Time. Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. The Emerson Collective, a social…
Read moreDonald Trump and the Media Agree on Middle-Class Income, and They are Both Wrong
…survey data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Nevertheless, such economic data is almost always imperfect, and CBO notes that its analysis: does not capture all government spending on social…
Read moreFour Underused Tools to Stop School Shootings
…social experiments in American history.” About “763,391 severely mentally ill people (over three-quarters of a million) are living in the community today who would have been hospitalized 40 years ago.”…
Read more2017: The Year in Facts and Falsehoods
…year for every full-time student, and private non-profit colleges are spending $52,000. College prices have been soaring for decades, but only 26% of spending by public colleges is dedicated to…
Read moreEffects of Immigration From Impoverished Nations
…spending has blossomed. Between 1968 and 2004, total inflation-adjusted federal, state, and local government spending on means-tested welfare rose from an annual average of $442 for every person in the…
Read moreLack of Assimilation is Economically Harming Latino Immigrants and Society
…and should be a “salad bowl” in which people mix but remain culturally distinct. The editors of the academic serial work American Immigration: An Encyclopedia of Political, Social, and Cultural…
Read moreMaximum Facts About the Minimum Wage
…and save taxpayers money. However, the same CBO analysis estimates that this law would cause spending on most social programs to rise and increase the “cumulative budget deficit over the…
Read moreAudit Reveals Federal Finances Are Far Worse Than Publicized Figures
…for fiscal obligations that are not legal liabilities but are still considered to be commitments of the federal government. These primarily consist of benefits due to current Social Security and…
Read moreCurrent National Debt Situation is the Worst in U.S. History
…federal policies. These primarily involve mounting expenditures on social programs (like Medicaid, Social Security, and food assistance), which have risen from 21% of the federal budget in 1960 to 60%…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
Among the nations of Europe, do those with greater levels of welfare spending have lower levels of wealth inequality?…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
Equally divided among every household in the United States, how large was the gap between government spending and revenues in 2021?…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
In 2021, what portion of all federal government spending was for social programs, such as healthcare, income security, education, housing, and recreation?…
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