Name:   MartiniMan - Subject:   Buteye Help Me or Martini Help Me Date:   2/14/2018 8:36:49 AM

All other spending outside entitlements are not quite a drop in a bucket but pretty close.  Social security is ~25% of the annual budget, health insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, CHP, etc.) accounts for another 26%.  Safety net type programs outside SS and the insurance programs amounts to around 10% of the annual spending. Interest expense from prior administrations is currently at 6% of the annual spending and will rise dramatically if rates go up.   So entltlement programs and mandatory interest payments account for two thirds of the total budget.  Defense is around 16%.  Even if you took defense and every other discretionary spending program to zero we would still run a deficit or just about break even.  And we know that will never happen.

I am all for getting rid of waste in all government programs but quite honestly when you take away the profit motive and add in the vote buying motive I am not sure that any government can be run efficiently.  There's just no real motivation to do so.  Regardless, we are not going to see any real change in the deficit spending unless and until they can tackle entitlement programs.  Unfortunately that is never going to happen if Democrats have any say.

The objective reality is that the only way for Republicans to get a budget passed in the Senate is to have at least 9 Democrats on their side.  There isn't one Democrat in favor of balanced budgets or fiscal sanity, let alone nine.  So they have to bribe them to get a budget passed or the govt shuts down and everyone bitches and moans and we have to listen to the nonstop whining of the media and the sob stories from people that know ahead of time all they are getting is more paid vacation.  I have little patience for all the sudden blaming Republicans for the deficits when we know that Democrats are the real reason.