Why Should The Federal Government Spending

The Government has to spend a lot of money for the country. Whether it is for pensions, health care, education, and many more stuff that the people of the United States need to live in the country. The total spending for the 2016 year was 6.7 trillion dollars. The total was made up of pensions, health care, education, defense, and welfare. Pensions accounted for 1.3 trillion, healthcare accounted for 1.5 trillion, education accounted for 1.0 trillion, defense accounted for 0.8 trillion, and welfare accounted for 0.5 trillion. All these categories have gone drastically up and will continue to go up each year. The only category that has gone down from 2004 is the welfare category, which has gone down since its highest rate in 2010. There are three levels of

governments in the United States.

Those are the federal, state, and local. To break it down to each sections spending, the federal spending was 3.7 trillion and is expected to be 4.0 trillion in 2016. The state spending was 1.6 trillion and is estimated to be the same in 2016. Local spending was at 1.8 trillion and is expected to be the same in 2016. So the federal government does the most amount of spending out of the three and it is a big gap between them. There is also Intergovernmental Transfers, which are transfers of funds from one level of government to another. This may be to fund general government operations or for specific purposes. Total spending in year 2015 was 6.4 trillion and is expected to grow each year because of needs for each state.
Some people might wonder where all this trillions and trillions of dollars go? Well there are mandatory spending and discretionary spending. It is split up into three classifications, the mandatory, the discretionary, and

the interest on debt. “Mandatory and discretionary spending account for more than ninety percent of all federal spending, and pay for all of the government services and programs on which we rely.” What is included in the mandatory spending, and how much does it cost? Social Security, Unemployment and Labor makes up almost half of the total mandatory spending and the rest is made up of Medicare, Food and Agriculture, Veterans Benefits, transportation, and other. Discretionary Spending is amounts set by the Congress each year that has to be spent. What is classified as discretionary spending? Most than half of it is for the military, and the rest is made up of government, education, Medicare and health, veteran’s benefits, housing, international affairs, energy and environment, science, transportation, and food and agriculture. Interest on debt, which is not as big as both mandatory and discretionary, is interest the government pays on its accumulated debt, minus interest income received by the government for assets it owns. A tax break which is a tax advantage is allowed by the government is larger than discretionary spending in 2015, but does not require annual approval. Some people might ask where all this money comes from. The three sources are “1.Income taxes paid by individuals: $1.48 trillion, or 47% of all tax revenues. 2. Payroll taxes paid jointly by workers and employers: $1.07 trillion, 34% of all tax revenues. 3. Corporate income taxes paid by businesses: $341.7 billion, or 11% of all tax revenues.”
An example of when Deficits and Debt can Encourage Economic Growth was World War II, the national debt was 120% of GDP