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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gerard mangiardi who wrote (457126)	9/11/2003 3:09:07 PM
From: Peter O'Brien	Respond to of 769670

Whether they "do good" or not is not the point! You still haven't answered my question! Until just a few decades ago, entitlements were just a small portion of the budget and defense was the major portion of the budget (over 50% of the budget, in fact). Today, defense is under 20% of the budget. What has changed in the past couple of decades to suddenly require massive entitlement spending increases? Do historical norms in terms of the budget mean nothing to you? How did we manage to survive as a country until just a few decades ago? Overall federal tax revenues (as a % of GDP) have not changed much over the past couple of decades either. Revenues have been roughly 20% of GDP for the past few decades. So, you cannot argue that revenues have somehow collapsed. What has changed is that we are spending much more of the budget on entitlements and much less of the budget on defense! I'll repeat my question to you: Why has such a drastic reallocation of budget priorities happened in just the past few decades? Why is it now necessary to spend so much more on entitlements compared to what we spent just a few decades ago? What has changed?