EU: Europeans vent their anger as cuts bite

The Telegraph ^ | 11/14/2012 | Bruno Waterfield

[familyop]

Oops—left out the other, temporary payroll tax cuts: hair over a $100 billion for one year. Still, along with the other tax hikes, not a dent in the deficit, and probably deleterious. The spending cuts, though, those would have an effect, if they were all done—probably an effect of about 2/3 to 3/4 of the yearly deficit. But, of course, there’d be all of the previous debt owed. [Laughter]

[Tublecane]

We weren’t talking about what is or is not a redistributive entitlement program, nor about “overruns.” You said social programs eat up nearly every penny of federal spending, and that defense is left to beg for its meals. Which is absolutely false. Like I said, defense eats up 20% of the budget. That is, if there were a budget.

If you wanna talk about “unfunded liabilities,” that’s another matter. Entitlement programs are on the hook for piles of cash that will in the near future dwarf defense spending and give us a $100 trillion-plus debt. But that is yet to come.

[TheBattman]

I hate to interrupt the interruption to the anti socialism rant...

My post was about social/entitlement spending’s portion of the income the Federal Government collects - not as a portion of the total spent (over $1.40 is spent for every dollar actually collected). And it is from the borrowed funds that defense and other actually Constitutional spending comes from (I say this only because the current government has put handouts in a category called “mandatory” spending. While putting Constitutionally mandated stuff in the “appropriated” category...

So-called “entitlement” spending exceeds gross tax revenues all by itself (and estimated $2.48 TRILLION in 2012 alone). Defense gets somewhere around $600 Billion.