Sequester: Where The Money Goes

Mad Dog is still trying to track down where we allocate our funds as a people.
These charts are from different websites, government, conservative think tanks, Mother Jones. They seem to reflect subtle differences in how conservatives and liberals see the same numbers. Creative accounting.

Double click on them to make them more readable.

Notable, is how little defense spending takes up compared to other programs in some charts--as low as 14% in some and as large as 19% in others and even in those where it is 19% Veterans benefits are separated from defense spending, which of course is a little irrational. The cost of a soldier's prosthetic leg is a cost of war, not a social security benefit. With all the money we can see spent at the Portsmouth Naval Yard and in Norfolk Virginia and in the districts of the Tea Party Republicans from California to Pennsylvania, it is surprising that slice of the pie isn't bigger. Agriculture and farm subsidies look surprisingly small. "Education" is surprisingly, gratifyingly, large. I wonder what that includes. 

What is included in "protection" is not clear. Is terrorism, the CIA, the NSA in "defense" or in "protection?" Should Veteran's Administration be in "Health" for the VA hospitals or in "Defense?"  Or should it be in" pensions?" If you added up "defense" "veterans" "protection" then the defense slice would be bigger than Medicare.  Presumably, the Republican/Tea party/ Conservative Think Tank types split off anything they can from "defense" to make that slice of the pie look smaller. And they add whatever they can to Medicare and Social Security to make that look larger.

Before we can really understand the debate about whether we need to cut spending or increase income, Mad Dog suspects, we need to actually see what we are spending and on what.

Creative accounting likely plays a subterranean role here.