No, I was right.
Of course there has been a massive expansion of entitlements under every president since LBJ, so Obama doesn't really stick out here, but stick out or not, there has been a massive expansion, when considering the increase is only over one year, and there will be a much more massive expansion, even if he doesn't do anything to add to entitlements and esp. if he does, by the time he leaves office.
In fact, the last "massive entitlement expansion" was Medicare Part D
No, every year, there is a massive expansion, the programs are growing rapidly.
Even with no program changes a lot of additional dollars are being spent. That's expansion. The last program change which increased the expansion was Medicare Part D. And yes, Bush signed it in to law. OTOH the main complaint from the Democrats was that it didn't spend enough.
and it was *entirely* funded by deficit borrowing
As long as you have deficits, any program that's smaller than those deficits can be presented as being funded entirely out of deficit spending. But the fact is that while the deficits where large (and are now even larger), they are not 100% of the budget.
Previous spending doesn't have some special priority, congress could cancel any of it with a single law being passed (even interest on the debt, however foolish defaulting would be).
Estimated receipts for fiscal year 2010 are $2.381 trillion, the official budget spending is $3.55 trillion. That means revenue covers 67% of spending. So in other words about a third of every program and spending item is funded by deficit borrowing. |
