
USAspending – How U.S. government money was spent in 2016 - sergiotapia
https://beta.usaspending.gov/#/
======
phkahler
One problem I have with this is lumping Social Security into the who federal
budget. SS has a separate tax and a separate fund. Some people will look at
that and say "wow look how much SS is costing us!" but it's really just paying
back money that was put into that system. This is often confused because the
SS fund is only allowed to "invest" it's money in treasury bonds. The result
of that is that the government "borrowed" the money in the fund and spent it,
and when the inevitable time comes (baby boomers retire) that there is a net
flow from the bonds back out to the recipients of SS checks, it's gonna feel
like a budget problem in congress.

This inclusion of SS into the mix also makes it look like 30 percent of the
budget is money going to individuals, but really 23 percent or so is just SS
payments to individuals. By including it here it downplays the crony project
spending.

~~~
catawbasam
Poorer young people are paying to support richer older people, many of whom
are able-bodied and perfectly capable of working. I think that is a big
problem.

~~~
gavinpc
At the same time, richer younger people are paying to support poorer older
people, many of whom are not capable of working. Even if we err on the side of
helping too many of our elders, I can't see that as a weakness of our nation.
Maybe you can stop people from becoming poor, but you can't stop people from
getting old.

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vmarsy
What does that heat map achieve? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to show
the raw billions per state. Instead it'd be interesting to see the
$/population in those states. Because otherwise you'll obviously see a lot of
money going to highly populated states like CA and TX.

For instance it would show that CA and TX receive about the same amount of
money, but Alabama receives 85% more money than California per inhabitant

~~~
specialist
No. It'd show that rich states like TX, NY, CA carry the rest of the nation.
And they hate us for it.

Edit, because some google-impaired pedant will insist on a cite for common
knowledge: [https://taxfoundation.org/federal-taxes-paid-vs-federal-
spen...](https://taxfoundation.org/federal-taxes-paid-vs-federal-spending-
received-state-1981-2005/)

Edit: pendant -> pedant

~~~
iak8god
> And they hate us for it.

I don't know where you live. Who's "us"?

~~~
toyg
From the tone and the average HN demographic, I'd say CA.

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ldayley
This is nice. It'll be interesting to see how these official reports match up
and/or differ in design or results with Steve Ballmer's new government
spending tracking project[0] as they continue. For example, Ballmer's org
reports that spending in 2014 was significantly larger then the number for
2016 reported on this site (5.2 trillion v. 3.85 trillion). It's also
interesting to see the difference in how spending is labeled by constituional
"mission" in the USAFacts site or function on the USASpending site. In any
event we're better off having both of them.

[0]-[https://www.usafacts.org](https://www.usafacts.org)

EDIT - add examples, reference url

------
rm_-rf_slash
This is pretty cool, but I fear that it could distract from the obvious issue:
the vast majority of federal expenditure goes to defense and elder welfare.

The problems are simple yet nobody in the political spheres wants to
acknowledge them: we spend way too much on SS/Medicare relative to taxation,
and the more people off the payrolls and on the old dole, the worse off the
country is, year by year.

Instead we get mislead about tax rates versus revenue, and are inundated with
various "Welfare Queen"-type stories to keep us distracted from the most
glaring budget problems we have.

The thing that pisses me off the most is that by the time the bill comes due
and the younger generations have to pay off the debt incurred by their parents
and grandparents, most of them will be too long dead to see how their
collective greed bankrupted their own progeny.

~~~
coldcode
Did you miss the part about SS and Medicare are paid for on an ongoing basis?
You really should keep those separate as they pay for themselves plus a
(decreasing) surplus. The remaining items are paid for with other taxes,
mostly individuals. With including income expenses are pointless. I have paid
and am paying into SS and Medicare my whole life, call it an old dole is
pretty inconsiderate.

~~~
valuearb
You haven't paid enough.

~~~
pishpash
Nobody pays enough. SS is pretty darn generous. Get ready for 50% SS tax when
more people retire and the workforce shrinks, or substantial means testing.
One or the other will happen.

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bluedino
The US is spending 50.8% of the budget (23+12.9+14.9) on social security,
medicare, and income security. How are they blamed for not helping enough
people (or helping people enough) and how are they spending _that_ damn much?

~~~
wslack
Income security includes VA costs, I think, so its not all direct support of
individuals.

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irtefa
AT&T got an award for $960MM
([https://beta.usaspending.gov/#/award/728263](https://beta.usaspending.gov/#/award/728263)).
But why?

~~~
burkaman
Related to this I assume: [http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/30/technology/att-
first-respond...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/30/technology/att-first-
responders/)

~~~
irtefa
Thanks! That looks very expensive.

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boomboomsubban
"Defense" is the largest chunk save social security payouts, and it's the only
thing Trump's budget suggests gets increased spending. So many of our problems
could be fixed by cutting that in half, hell we'd be better defended giving
that money to our "enemies" for infrastructure. And the only way it ends up
being worthwhile spent on "defense" is a war.

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pnathan
The risk of exposing this sort of information to general availability is that
its easily weaponized as a propaganda tool for the political cause of the day,
riling up the uninformed and unskilled (I am both essentially uninformed and
unskilled in the art of macroeconomics).

~~~
gavinpc
That's not a risk, that's the raison d'etre. In the fifteen seconds most
people will spend scrolling through this (of those who bother at all), only
two things will be left in their mind: Social Security and California. I
expect to hear a lot of "discussion" about Social Security in the next few
cycles. They're coming after it again (cf 2005). It's already happening on
this thread.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14301591](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14301591)

~~~
pnathan
sigh.

i am tired of the 'soak the poor' rhetoric so popular.

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clmckinley
I would love to see this compared to other 1st world countries. I know the US
spends way more on defense then other countries, but how does elderly care
compare for instance. Also, how does total (personal/business/fees, etc)
revenue and revenue/citizen compare.

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josefresco
On a related note, I have one of these posters on my office wall (no
affiliation) [https://www.timeplots.com/products/death-and-
taxes-2016](https://www.timeplots.com/products/death-and-taxes-2016)

------
specialist
Neat. Coupled with sources of revenue, this could be even better.

It'd better show that metro areas are carrying everyone else.

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codegeek
Education, Training, Employment and Social services: 2.7%

Defense: 14.9%

Anyone else see something wrong with this ?

~~~
jacobn
Most educational spending is state/local. In 2012 they spent ~1/3 of ~$2.6T =
$826B, which corresponds to 21.5% of the federal budget.

[http://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-
initiatives...](http://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-
initiatives/state-local-finance-initiative/projects/state-and-local-
backgrounders/state-and-local-expenditures)

------
nightcracker
XKCD relevant once again: [https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

~~~
rukittenme
Except that's not what's happening since different dynamics are in play.
Florida takes in $2bn more than Texas but has 7 million fewer people.

They should have have done $/pop but this is definitely not a population heat
map.

~~~
bpodgursky
People retire to Florida. If you don't control very carefully for stuff like
social security, that's a useless metric, since those people paid taxes in a
different state while younger.

~~~
dkhenry
I think you could make the metric useful by filtering out Social Security and
Medicare which come from different revenue sources then the General Fund. At
that point a direct population comparison becomes much more useful

~~~
catawbasam
Why would you ignore 2 of the largest spending categories?

~~~
dkhenry
two reasons.

1\. Their funding doesn't come out of discretionary spending, they self fund
through individual taxes.

2\. Their outlays go mainly to older people who have a tendency to group in
specific states, and due to the size of the expenditure relative to the rest
of the budget even a small bias in where that money goes overshadows any real
variance in discretionary spending

