U.S. Budget and Economy

The first graph in my prior post shows that total outlays rose from about 18 and a half percent of GDP in 2000 to about 21 percent of GDP in 2008 and, after a large spike in 2009, are projected to continue at about 22 percent of GDP through 2014. As a help in determining the cause of this rise in outlays, following is a more detailed version of the second graph in that post: In addition, following is a table that shows the change in the nine major components of actual federal outlays from 2000 to 2008 and of projected federal outlays from 2008 to 2014: CHANGE IN FEDERAL OUTLAYS (percentage of GDP) Commerce Undist. National Income Social Net & Housing Offsetng Other Total Years Defense Health Medicare Security Security Interest Credit Receipts Outlays Outlays ----- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------...

There has been a great deal of discussion about the role of spending in the current and past deficits of the federal government. Since the most commonly referenced deficit, the unified deficit, is equal to federal revenues minus federal outlays, deficits are affected by all items that affect revenues and outlays. These items include tax rates, economic activity, and spending. Regarding spending, I have posted a number of graphs and tables that look at spending from 1940 to 2014 at the following links: Outlays in Billions of Current Dollars Outlays as a Percentage of GDP The following graph shows total federal outlays and receipts since 1940: The actual numbers used to create this graph can be found at the second link . As can be seen, total receipts have mostly been in the 17% to 19% of GDP range in the 54 years since 1954. They have only dipped below 17% of GDP in five years, reaching a low of 16.1% of GDP in 1959 and they have risen above 19% in just nine years, reaching a high ...