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:
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)