History
Prior to the Great Depression, nearly all federal expenditures were discretionary. However, following the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, an increasing percentage of the federal budget was devoted to mandatory spending. In 1947, Social Security accounted for just under five percent of the federal budget and less than one-half of one percent of gross domestic product (GDP). By 1962, 13 percent of the federal budget and half of all mandatory spending was committed to Social Security. In 1965 Congress created Medicare, a government administered health insurance program for senior citizens. In the 10 years following the creation of Medicare, mandatory spending increased from 30 percent to over 50 percent of the federal budget. Though the rate of increase has since slowed, mandatory spending composed about 60 percent of the federal budget in FY 2012.
Read more about this topic: Mandatory Spending
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)