Major Expenditure Categories
CBO's preliminary estimates indicate the federal government spent $3.54 trillion on a budget or cash basis during fiscal year (FY) 2012 or 22.6% GDP, down 1.6% vs. FY2011 spending of $3.60 trillion. Spending fell across all major categories except Social Security and Medicare.
During FY 2011, the federal government spent $3.60 trillion on a budget or cash basis, up 4% vs. FY 2010 spending of $3.46 trillion and up 20% versus FY2008 spend of $2.97 trillion. Major categories of FY 2011 spending included: Medicare & Medicaid ($835B or 24%), Social Security ($725B or 20%), Defense Department ($700B or 19%), non-defense discretionary ($646B or 19%), other ($465B or 12%) and interest ($227B or 6%). Expenditures are classified as mandatory, with payments required by specific laws, or discretionary, with payment amounts renewed annually as part of the budget process. Expenditures averaged 20.6% GDP from 1971 to 2008, generally ranging +/-2% GDP from that level. The 2011 and 2010 spend were both 24.1% GDP, versus 2008 spend of 20.8% GDP.
Read more about this topic: United States Federal Budget
Famous quotes containing the words major, expenditure and/or categories:
“Self-esteem evolves in kids primarily through the quality of our relationships with them. Because they can’t see themselves directly, children know themselves by reflection. For the first several years of their lives, you are their major influence. Later on, teachers and friends come into the picture. But especially at the beginning, you’re it with a capital I.”
—Stephanie Martson (20th century)
“Shopping malls are liquid TVs for the end of the twentieth century. A whole micro-circuitry of desire, ideology and expenditure for processed bodies drifting through the cyber-space of ultracapitalism.”
—Arthur Kroker (b. 1945)
“all the categories which we employ to describe conscious mental acts, such as ideas, purposes, resolutions, and so on, can be applied to ... these latent states.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)