2/08/2005 07:05:00 AM|||Toni|||MSNBC

Here's a nice condensed analysis of the Federal Budget. There's some interesting things to note in it:

From 1962 to last year, outlays ranged between 17.2 percent of GDP and 23.5 percent of GDP. Last year they amounted to 19.8 percent of GDP.
So as a rough yardstick, federal spending has been about one-fifth of the total economy.

In 1962, when Kennedy squared off with Soviets over nuclear missiles in Cuba, U.S. defense outlays were nearly half of all federal spending, or about 9.3 percent of GDP.
Last year, they were 20 percent of all federal spending or 3.9 percent of GDP.

Twenty years ago, the three big entitlements [my insert: Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security] accounted for 30 percent of federal outlays. Last year, they amounted to 42 percent of spending and by 2015 they’ll be 55 percent.

The growth in the entitlements programs means that discretionary outlays for items such as national parks, AIDS prevention, etc. keep shrinking as a percentage of total spending.
|||110786790437975701|||Ten things to know about the federal budget