RSSComposition of Federal Spending and Taxes for 2007
This chart illustrates how the $162 billion dollar deficit was created during the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2007. Simply put, spending exceeded taxes by $162 billion for the year. The federal government borrowed the additional $162 billion from the public during 2007, which brought the balance of the national debt held by the public to slightly over $5 trillion by the end of the year.
16 Responses to “Composition of Federal Spending and Taxes for 2007”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:38 am
One interesting point about this slide is that it shows that spending for Medicare and Medicaid ($561 billion) plus spending for Social Security ($581 billion) equals $1.142 trillion. This entitlement spending already exceed the taxes dedicated for such purposes ($870 billion for Social Security and Medicare taxes) by $272 billion. As the baby boomers retire, this funding gap will become far worse and, as other charts in this presentation show, unsustainable. It is obvious that there is an urgent need to address the funding issues with Medicare and Social Security.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Per the Government web site treasurydirect the outstanding debt went up by $500.68 Billion from 9/30/2006 to 9/30/2007 not the $162 Billion shown here. Also the interest on the debt was Almost $430 B not the $237 B shown here. Looks like maybe they are wanting to use only public debt not the total debt.
[Editor - Correct. This chart only shows debt held by the public and interest paid on that debt. It does not show intragovernmental holdings (debt held in entitlement trust funds) or interest "paid" on that debt.]
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
There are plenty of comments out there (ie, plusaf’s website link) about how the Democrats in office created, and later, messed up Social Security, creating the problems we have today. But in all fairness, let’s take a look at who created the whole big tax mess we are in today. In 1909, President William Howard Taft, a Republican (and a lawyer), proposed amending the Constitution to remove the apportionment restriction on taxing of incomes. It was drafted and passed quickly by both houses, both which had Republican majorities, and by 1913, it had been ratified by all but 6 states, becoming the 16th amendment to the Constitution. This amendment gave Congress the ABSOLUTE POWER to lay and collect taxes from any source of income without any guidelines, limitations, or restrictions. This is what has led to our current situation. Power without controls. Both Democrats and Repulicans can be blamed for our current dillema. Neither a Flat Tax, a National Sales Tax, or any tax increases, will fix our problem until there is an amendment to the Constitution which puts controls on taxing, borrowing, and spending.
June 20th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
marshacat is right about the Flat Tax, any decent tax specialist can coach a savvy customer on how to pay less. The higher income taxpayers will find clever ways of sheltering their income. Amuse yourself all you want with ‘what-ifs’, the tax gurus will be the ones getting rich teaching new schemes.
Any attempt to make corporations yield a larger portion of their income will result in corporations finding ways to reduce their US income. Less domestic growth, increased R&D or other tax-sheltering maneuvers, new corporations choosing to form in more favorable tax structures, like LLC’s.
Corporations are not the bad guys here. Corporations do not consume anything provided by the government, individuals do. Corporations, however, do buy Treasury Bills, fund retirement accounts, provide jobs for a large portion of our population, and contribute greatly to the GDP. GDP is a benchmark component in our economy, we should be doing all we can to promote its growth.
Excessive spending is clearly the culprit.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
The Flat Tax is NOT the answer — it is still a confiscatory taxing mechanism in which we are forced (at gunpoint, if necessary) to participate; it leaves intact the structure that violates the Bill of Rights; it enables and gives incentive to people to “hide” their income to escape taxation, still dumping the burden on the lower middle class who can’t afford CPAs, tax attorneys, and to buy loopholes through lobbyists; power is retained by government.
The Fair Tax Act (HR25 / S1025) is a Constitutional tax (indirect, uniform), that is naturally progressive (untaxes the very poor; allows everyone else a choice of participation in funding what the gov’t does). A simple accross the board consumption tax; no individual filing; retailers would collect it the same as they do sales tax (90% of all sales taxes are collected by just 10% of the retailers); compliance is cut and dry and simple; no incentive to hide income; no cascading of taxes from businesses to consumers; totally transparent so we KNOW how much tax we are paying; power is returned to We the People.
http://www.OperationOffTheFence org.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
feel free to see some fallacies about “fair” taxation at http://www.plusaf.com/soapbox/flattax.htm
in about 1970 i did some simple math and found out that if you took the entire tax revenue of the US government and divided it by the total income of everyone in the US, the ratio was about 6-7 per cent!!
so, i estimated, if you set a floor level of about 200% of the alleged “poverty level” income and didn’t charge ANYTHING in income taxes to ANYONE until they achieved that level, a flat tax [with NO deductions for ANYTHING] of about 13% would probably bring in as much or more tax revenue! and could be adjusted DOWN if it “brought in too much and the deficits were being paid down too quickly.”
try that math, too…
but any time anyone says “the rich aren’t paying their fair share,” i’m going to be climbing on top of my soapbox and shouting, “B.S.!!!”
and that goes for the “net worth tax” described elsewhere on this site. lousy idea.