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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alex MG who wrote (41578)	3/30/2017 12:26:55 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

"Big Spender" or not is a seperate point from whether the programs are worthwhile or beneficial. Whatever the level of gross and/or net benefit from the entitlement programs the point is they account for most of the spending, the fastest growing large programs, and the most difficult to control part of federal spending. Even now the "big spending" is mostly on them, and its going to be so to a greater and greater extent in the future. solutions.heritage.org Entitlements dwarf even defense going forward. Controlling spending is all about entitlements. Everything else, even defense, is pretty marginal. As for your "increases in the national debt chart" it ignores control of congress, ignores Obama (who had the highest average deficits as a percentage of GDP since WWII), and ignores the point that entitlements passed largely by Democrats in congress and signed mostly by Democratic presidents, drove the spending increases even under Republican administrations. None of which is to say that the Republicans are not big spenders. They generally have been. But they have had little control (mostly neither the white house or the hill) when the programs that drive the looming fiscal crisis where enacted.