February 07, 2005

This Will Be Fun

It ox-goring time on Capitol Hill:

President Bush sent Congress a $2.57 trillion budget plan Monday that seeks deep spending cuts across a wide swath of government from reducing subsidies paid to the nation's farmers, cutting health care payments for poor people and veterans and trimming spending on the environment and education.

The budget - the most austere of Bush's presidency - would eliminate or vastly scale back 150 government programs. It will spark months of contentious debate in Congress, where lawmakers will fight to protect their favored programs.

Is anyone else amused that a 12% increase from last year's budget is labelled austere? Funny how we can't cut a cent from the annual increases in government spending without the sky falling, isn't it? For those that care, here's what federal income and spending has been for the last fifteen years:

budget.PNG

For the record, it has taken 14 years for federal spending to double. That is a compounded annual growth rate of 5.08%. Surprisingly, this is only a little higher than the 4.90% compounded annual growth rate of GDP over the same time period (as computed from data available here). I wouldn't have expected that.

Posted by Charles Austin at February 7, 2005 12:13 PM
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