I've seen various culprits listed for the current ginormous budget deficit -- Bush's tax cuts, TARP, the stimulus bill, Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. -- but it seems few people are willing to talk about the simple growth in bread and butter government expenditures. I decided to look up the numbers for discretionary spending (i.e. non-entitlement/mandatory spending) in 2000 and see how they compared to later that decade. Here's what I found:
So, almost $600 billion. And for fiscal year 2009, which began in October of 2008? Double that amount:
It's simply out of control. I think this also drives home the point that defense cuts have to be considered as part of any realistic plan to get the deficit under control.
