The war is government spending for a purpose (whether or not the purpose is a good one doesn't effect that point), funds are used up in order to try to achieve that purpose. It isn't a transfer to anyone.
Pork programs in many cases are not transfers, and also often don't go exclusively to the rich. For example building a road with federal money, isn't a transfer program, and pays a lot of construction crews.
Which doesn't mean I'm defending the pork, its a poor way to do business and can result in wasting money on projects that aren't really needed.
The Medicare drug plan is a plan to subsidize the purchase of drugs (or really to buy insurance covering drug purchases, not directly to buy drugs), that applies to people of all incomes not just the wealthy. Technically it might not be considered a transfer program, but a subsidy to buy something is close enough to a transfer that I won't quibble over the difference, if you want to call it a transfer I won't object.
But its not a transfer targeted on the wealthy, any more than government subsidies for home heating oil are subsidies targeted at the wealthy because the oil gets sold by oil companies who have a lot of money.
$4tril dwarves the amount spent on "pork programs pushed through in the Bush administration, the war, and the medicare drug plan". Even if you count the war as a $700bil transfer to the wealthy (which is ridiculous) much more was spent on social programs.
The majority of the extra spending during the Bush administration has been on social programs. All the entitlements have increased a lot, education spending has increased a lot. Actually almost everything has increased a lot, but the entitlements are where the big money is, and where the vast majority of wealth transfers take place. |
