USAspending – How U.S. government money was spent in 2016 | Hacker News Reader

USAspending – How U.S. government money was spent in 2016

beta.usaspending.gov

68 pointssergiotapia62 comments

One problem I have with this is lumping Social Security into the who federal budget. SS has a separate tax and a separate fund. Some people will look at that and say "wow look how much SS is costing us!" but it's really just paying back money that was put into that system. This is often confused because the SS fund is only allowed to "invest" it's money in treasury bonds. The result of that is that the government "borrowed" the money in the fund and spent it, and when the inevitable time comes (baby boomers retire) that there is a net flow from the bonds back out to the recipients of SS checks, it's gonna feel like a budget problem in congress.

This inclusion of SS into the mix also makes it look like 30 percent of the budget is money going to individuals, but really 23 percent or so is just SS payments to individuals. By including it here it downplays the crony project spending.

Except we keep "borrowing" money from Social Security, so it might as well be counted towards the general budget.

Why the scare quotes? You think the government will default on that debt?

Yes, many in the government don't want to recognize it as real debt and don't want to figure out how to pay it back.

Poorer young people are paying to support richer older people, many of whom are able-bodied and perfectly capable of working. I think that is a big problem.

At the same time, richer younger people are paying to support poorer older people, many of whom are not capable of working. Even if we err on the side of helping too many of our elders, I can't see that as a weakness of our nation. Maybe you can stop people from becoming poor, but you can't stop people from getting old.

What does that heat map achieve? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to show the raw billions per state. Instead it'd be interesting to see the $/population in those states. Because otherwise you'll obviously see a lot of money going to highly populated states like CA and TX.

For instance it would show that CA and TX receive about the same amount of money, but Alabama receives 85% more money than California per inhabitant

was going to say the same, seems like its a poor attempt to show how we are wasting taxpayers money on a few states hence .. we should shut down these 'wasteful' govt programs.

honestly how hard would it have been (even for beta) to show the revenue breakdown by the states also?

It makes it look like CA receives more than its fair share of federal money, which then is used as justification for moving that to other states.

It does have a documented API. Maybe someone can hackup the data with more informative visualizations. hmm

https://api.usaspending.gov/

No. It'd show that rich states like TX, NY, CA carry the rest of the nation. And they hate us for it.

Edit, because some google-impaired pedant will insist on a cite for common knowledge: https://taxfoundation.org/federal-taxes-paid-vs-federal-spen...

Edit: pendant -> pedant

> And they hate us for it.

I don't know where you live. Who's "us"?

From the tone and the average HN demographic, I'd say CA.

> Edit, because some google-impaired pendant will insist on a cite for common knowledge

"pedant" :)

Do you have a citation for "they hate us for us"?

Your chart shows Nevada, NJ, NH, MN and Connecticut as the top ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state

Your citation is fascinating! So many interesting comparisons. (Also, there's a non-Scribd link here: https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/ftsbs-timeseries... ).

I wish there was a graphical representation of the data (that wasn't too skewed by land area or population). It would also be nice if the absolute numbers were inflation-adjusted.

To address the issue, though, your citation shows that Texas is right in the middle of per-capita federal taxes at $6,437 per person, ranked 25th. I think it's more illuminating to look at per capita numbers, otherwise it's just a comparison of population. If anything, Connecticut residents paying $11,522 in taxes per person would revile Texans for not paying their fair share.

$/population is more useful, but even more useful would be "revenue - spending" or "(revenue - spending) / population". I suspect that California would be positive, while smaller rural states would be negative.

Federal programs are supposed to benefit multiple states, so it's sad that there are so many programs that benefit specific states: Something like the interstate highway is useful to California citizens/businesses even though most of the highway isn't maintained by California and the money isn't given to California. So an argument that California pays "more than its fair share" for the highway isn't convincing.

Contrast the highway with Medicare, where the benefits accrue to each state individually. An argument that California pays "more than its fair share" for Medicare would be more convincing to me.

This is nice. It'll be interesting to see how these official reports match up and/or differ in design or results with Steve Ballmer's new government spending tracking project[0] as they continue. For example, Ballmer's org reports that spending in 2014 was significantly larger then the number for 2016 reported on this site (5.2 trillion v. 3.85 trillion). It's also interesting to see the difference in how spending is labeled by constituional "mission" in the USAFacts site or function on the USASpending site. In any event we're better off having both of them.

[0]-https://www.usafacts.org

EDIT - add examples, reference url

This is pretty cool, but I fear that it could distract from the obvious issue: the vast majority of federal expenditure goes to defense and elder welfare.

The problems are simple yet nobody in the political spheres wants to acknowledge them: we spend way too much on SS/Medicare relative to taxation, and the more people off the payrolls and on the old dole, the worse off the country is, year by year.

Instead we get mislead about tax rates versus revenue, and are inundated with various "Welfare Queen"-type stories to keep us distracted from the most glaring budget problems we have.

The thing that pisses me off the most is that by the time the bill comes due and the younger generations have to pay off the debt incurred by their parents and grandparents, most of them will be too long dead to see how their collective greed bankrupted their own progeny.

> This is pretty cool, but I fear that it could distract from the obvious issue: the vast majority of federal expenditure goes to defense and elder welfare.

That's what I always thought too. But the site seems to disagree? All of defense + social security is only 38%. Even if you also include all of medicare in that, you're only at 53%. Which is a majority, but not a vast one. And it probably isn't fair to really put social security in that category, because it is (sort of) self-funding (or at least, if you eliminated social security, that wouldn't just free up money to spend elsewhere).

> And it probably isn't fair to really put social security in that category, because it is (sort of) self-funding (or at least, if you eliminated social security, that wouldn't just free up money to spend elsewhere).

thats their argument. if you take the ss tax away and privatize it then the wallstreet custodians get to play with it in market.. plus lower taxes and more fees for WS. one more thing , anytime you change the rules of the game you get to define the problems you are going to address and the problems you'll turn the blind eye to. so very high possibility of rigging the game. IMO even if you want to privatize SS current congress is the worst one to be allowed to.

> the wallstreet custodians get to play with it in market

More like they get to siphon off a percentage as rent seeking leaches.

Social security and Medicare aren't self funded, that's the problem.

Social security is for the most part. The problem is that they were required to invest the fund in treasury bonds, which mean congress "borrowed" them money and spent it. As the boomers retire and get their due, that money will have to be paid back. But congress will see that as a budget shortfall and complain about some "entitlement program".

No, social security is running an actuarial deficit. The older generation, which is already richer than the general population, is extracting money at an unsustainable rate.

They are redeeming their bonds. The government spent the surplus on other things and issued IOUs to the SSA. Now they're just pissed that they're being called on to pay it back. This is not really a debate - Alan Greenspan even said these bonds are real assets of the fund.

Did you miss the part about SS and Medicare are paid for on an ongoing basis? You really should keep those separate as they pay for themselves plus a (decreasing) surplus. The remaining items are paid for with other taxes, mostly individuals. With including income expenses are pointless. I have paid and am paying into SS and Medicare my whole life, call it an old dole is pretty inconsiderate.

Nope. Boomers are taking out $1 million more per head than they put in. See e.g. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/trust-funds-summary.html:

"The projected actuarial deficit for the combined trust funds over the next 75 years is 2.66 percent of taxable payroll, which is slightly less than last year's projected deficit of 2.68 percent. As a share of the economy or gross domestic product (GDP), the actuarial deficit over the next 75 years is projected to be 1.0 percent."

Currently the max payout is 2,639 per month. In order to get $1M you would have to live to age 97. That assumes you never put anything in. The average lifespan is only 13 years past 65. I don't know what kind of math that is but its misleading.

You haven't paid enough.

Nobody pays enough. SS is pretty darn generous. Get ready for 50% SS tax when more people retire and the workforce shrinks, or substantial means testing. One or the other will happen.

People are going to have to work longer, including people like me.

I reserve my right to be bitter about social security until I see politicians raise the income tax cap and ensure the system is properly paid in for generations to come.

Otherwise, as far as it looks right now, the system is going to crash under its own weight. Not today, not in 10 years, but perhaps in the 40 years between now and my supposed retirement.

Senior voters never seem to raise a stink about this. As long as politicians from both parties promise never to cut SS/Medicare, that seems to be enough to get their votes and send them home.

There's a bit more subtlety there in that a lot of the SS growth is SS disability, which is in practice turning into a welfare system for the non elderly. But generally correct, yes.

according to USAfacts.org-

social security: 15.8% of tax spending education: 14.3$ national defense: 11.2% medicare: 9.5%

That's half of all Gov spending right there

Those are reasonable things for a government to spend half of its take on. The other half...

The US is spending 50.8% of the budget (23+12.9+14.9) on social security, medicare, and income security. How are they blamed for not helping enough people (or helping people enough) and how are they spending that damn much?

Income security includes VA costs, I think, so its not all direct support of individuals.

Just look at the streets of San Francisco. Despite all that money, there are still plenty of people who don't get what they need. That's why they're blamed.

AT&T got an award for $960MM (https://beta.usaspending.gov/#/award/728263). But why?

Thanks! That looks very expensive.

"Defense" is the largest chunk save social security payouts, and it's the only thing Trump's budget suggests gets increased spending. So many of our problems could be fixed by cutting that in half, hell we'd be better defended giving that money to our "enemies" for infrastructure. And the only way it ends up being worthwhile spent on "defense" is a war.

The risk of exposing this sort of information to general availability is that its easily weaponized as a propaganda tool for the political cause of the day, riling up the uninformed and unskilled (I am both essentially uninformed and unskilled in the art of macroeconomics).

That's not a risk, that's the raison d'etre. In the fifteen seconds most people will spend scrolling through this (of those who bother at all), only two things will be left in their mind: Social Security and California. I expect to hear a lot of "discussion" about Social Security in the next few cycles. They're coming after it again (cf 2005). It's already happening on this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14301591

sigh.

i am tired of the 'soak the poor' rhetoric so popular.

I would love to see this compared to other 1st world countries. I know the US spends way more on defense then other countries, but how does elderly care compare for instance. Also, how does total (personal/business/fees, etc) revenue and revenue/citizen compare.

On a related note, I have one of these posters on my office wall (no affiliation) https://www.timeplots.com/products/death-and-taxes-2016

Neat. Coupled with sources of revenue, this could be even better.

It'd better show that metro areas are carrying everyone else.

Education, Training, Employment and Social services: 2.7%

Defense: 14.9%

Anyone else see something wrong with this ?

Yep, that first number is way too high since the federal government doesn't need to be involved with those things.

Most educational spending is state/local. In 2012 they spent ~1/3 of ~$2.6T = $826B, which corresponds to 21.5% of the federal budget.

http://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives...

XKCD relevant once again: https://xkcd.com/1138/

Except that's not what's happening since different dynamics are in play. Florida takes in $2bn more than Texas but has 7 million fewer people.

They should have have done $/pop but this is definitely not a population heat map.

People retire to Florida. If you don't control very carefully for stuff like social security, that's a useless metric, since those people paid taxes in a different state while younger.

But they didn't pay enough taxes, social security is a huge subsidy of our wealthiest people, the elderly.

I think you could make the metric useful by filtering out Social Security and Medicare which come from different revenue sources then the General Fund. At that point a direct population comparison becomes much more useful

Why would you ignore 2 of the largest spending categories?

two reasons.

1. Their funding doesn't come out of discretionary spending, they self fund through individual taxes.

2. Their outlays go mainly to older people who have a tendency to group in specific states, and due to the size of the expenditure relative to the rest of the budget even a small bias in where that money goes overshadows any real variance in discretionary spending

Many of them could still be working and paying in rather than taking money out.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14301241 and marked it off-topic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com