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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs
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To: RMF who wrote (68566)12/31/2013 3:40:36 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 71588
 
Can you clarify WHEN the previous precedent for deficits was set.

For war time deficits - During the Revolutionary War.
For sustained peace time deficits - Under Hoover and FDR in the 30s

The costs for Iraq and Afghanistan were pretty stiff, so I'm wondering how you can say that "social spending" was a bigger contributor to the deficits during the Bush years than those two wars?

Because they where bigger, and not just bigger but much bigger. Total spending in 2000 was $1.764 bil. Total spending in Bush's highest year was $3.518 tril. The increase per year was more then the amount spent on the wars during all of those years. That assigning 2009 to Bush, when really the transition year's spending are partially the result of the outgoing president and partially the result of the incoming president, but if you use 2008's $2.9tril the result is still the same, only a fraction of all that extra spending went to the wars.

In 2009 Entitlement spending (all of which is social spending was $1.636 billion. "War on Terror" Spending was less than a tenth of that, and entitlements do not include all social spending. The Department of Education spent another $45.4bil, Health and Human Services spent another $70.4bil, Hosuing and Urban Development $38.5bil, then you have a portion of Agriculture's $20.8bil, and of Labor's $10.5bil, and some more money from other parts of the budget.

Or to look at it another way. Defense (not just the war on terror spending, but all DoD spending) went from $281bil nominal ($354bil adjusted for inflation) to around $660bil. That increase of $379bil nominal) is much smaller then the increase in social spending, and that's counting the regular defense budget as well.

If you just count the war spending then the increase is around $150bil (for a years spending) vs a total increase of about one and three quarter trillion dollars (of which over half is social spending).
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