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7 Responses to “”

1. beefeater Says:
   July 9th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

   “However, when the White House releases its budget pie graph it includes mandatory expenditures such as social security and medicare. This is misleading because Congress has no control over manditory [sic] expenditures.”

   False. Congress, and only Congress, has control over mandatory expenditures. Acts of Congress (e.g., most recently, the expansion of Medicare drug benefit) are what makes these expenditures mandatory — that is, mandatory for every President — in the first place.

   Disagreement is something I can usually live with, but ignorance just drives me nuts.

2. eric Says:
   July 9th, 2006 at 11:03 pm

   Let me know if I have this right. “Mandatory” expenditures are set out by legislation just like other spending, but they are not subject to annual approval by Congress. They’re long-term commitments to long-term investments, and the threshold to renege on these commitments is appropriately high. “Discretionary” spending is simply spending that Congress must explicitly approve every year.

   I appreciate that you’ve pointed out the inaccuracy here. It’s too bad the author was dumb and got it wrong, because — unless I misunderstand — it doesn’t seem like the message would be weakened by more precise language. There is a qualitative difference between discretionary and mandatory items, even if Congress has control over both. To compare discretionary items on their own is still telling.

   According to Wikipedia, the military accounted for about 18% of the 2005 budget, including both discretionary and mandatory spending. Social security accounted for about 22%.

   “Education, Training, and Social Services”? 4%. We spend over 4 times on the military what we spend on education. Yay us.

3. beefeater Says:
   July 11th, 2006 at 12:06 am

   The gory detail takes 17 pages to explain, but in substance you’re right. Discretionary spending is that which it takes an Act of Congress to continue; mandatory is that which it takes an Act of Congress to stop. In practice, however, some discretionary items may be more difficult to renege on than some mandatory ones. Whether or not the distinction is meaningful depends on the argument you want to make.

   One ought to also keep in mind that K-12 education and many social programs (but none of the defense programs) are funded by the 50 individual states and never show up in the federal budget. As well, some of what we spend on education is paid directly by the individuals involved, instead of being first collected from them as taxes and then paid on their behalf to educational institutions. Again, whether or not it is appropriate to take this into account depends on your argument.

4. beefeater Says:
   July 11th, 2006 at 12:13 am

   Jees, man, you really ought to add a comment preview feature for us mere mortals who mistype our HTML sometimes. The link is http://www.house.gov/budget/budget-process-brf.pdf

5. enjelani Says:
   July 13th, 2006 at 12:30 pm

   add “accounting” to that long list of stuff i need to learn more about. “government & public policy” too, while we’re at it.

   one thought that occurred to me: some things are just more expensive than others, even if you consider the latter a higher priority. my guess is that you can get a bang-up education for all K-12 students for a lot less money than you can get enough aircraft for the Air Force. the former is like your water filter; the latter is like your car. so in addition to the points made here, maybe it’s misleading to compare military spending to education spending in the first place.

   that, of course, begs the question: if it would cost so little to improve education, why aren’t we doing it? and if the issue isn’t money…why aren’t we paying a bunch of brilliant consultants to help fix it?

6. eric Says:
   July 13th, 2006 at 12:43 pm

   have you seen the latest issue of Stanford magazine? they have a couple of essays written from opposing sides about education reform and No Child Left Behind in particular. i found one piece to be a lot more compelling than the other (i’m sure you can guess which), but they’re a good read.

7. beefeater Says:
   July 13th, 2006 at 9:17 pm

   Combined federal, state, and private spending on all education is 7.5% of gross domestic product (1994-95 figure, the best I could find on short notice). The K-12 portion of it is 4.5% of GDP. Defense spending in the same year is 3.7% of GDP.

   http://www.pbs.org/newshour/backgrounders/school_funding.html

   http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative-size.php#gdp-graph

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