With three extra days to work with - hopefully you got your taxes in on time. American Farm Bureau’s Johnna Miller talked to the organization’s chief economist about where that money goes…
Have you ever thought about how much money the federal government spends on your behalf every year? American Farm Bureau Federation’s Chief Economist Bob Young has…”the FY2012 budget comes in at about $3.65 trillion, so you divide that by the population of the country of 311,446,721, and you end up with $11,745 that the government spends for every man, woman and child in the country.”
So, where does all that money go?
“Well, the biggest piece, by far, ends up being about $3,354 that they spend on your behalf on Medicare and Medicaid. Social Security comes in a close second at $2,450 per capita. Defense Department is going to spend $895 for their operational activities and another $468 for military pay, about $250 per capita for the Department of Defense. Costs on the national debt, we spend $1,439 per capita on paying interest on the national debt.”
Add that all up, and that’s about 80% of government spending. Young says to get rid of our $1.5 trillion debt we need to cut about $5,000 in our spending per capita, that’s almost 40%.
“You take Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense off the table, there’s nothing, you literally have to get rid of everything else in government to bring things in balance.”
Anybody really think that’s going to happen?
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