where does it all go

i have been looking at the u.s. government's budget.

federal government outlays by agency
2004 estimates

1. health and human services - 539 billion
2. social security administration (on-budget + off-budget) - 530 billion
3. treasury - 391 billion
4. defense-military - 358 billion

next highest spending category
agriculture - 74 billion

to get percentages we could use total outlays, which equal 2.229 trillion, but that total is deceptive because of undistributed offsetting receipts which reduced the total outlays to that number. anyway, if we do want to use that total number, here is where our money goes by percent to the top five spending categories: 24.2, 23.8, 17.5, 16.0, and 3.3%.

i found a pie chart of health and human services expenditures in 2001 by percent.

medicare: 51.9%
medicaid: 29.6%
discretionary: 10.8%
TANF: 3.8%
children's mandatory: 3.4%
other: 0.5%

and i found 2004 estimates for social security administration spending categories.

OASI (old-age and survivors insurance): $417 billion
DI (disability insurance): $80 billion
SSI (supplemented security income): $37 billion

the main programs we spend money on are social security, the national debt, the military, medicare, and medicaid.

next time i will discuss my platform for eliminating each one of these fiscal burdens.