In 2020 total Federal spending was $6.6 trillion.
Mandatory spending by the federal government totaled $4.6 trillion in 2020, of which $2.32 trillion was for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Income security programs (”welfare”) was $1.052 trillion of which $341 billion was for COVID the rest is for things like SNAP, etc. “Other programs” $977 billion. Not quite sure what’s meant by paycheck protection but its $526 billion of that $977 billion. Also, more COVID spending - COVID Relief $149 billion. Federal retirement both military and civilian was $171 billion,
To actually operate the federal government was $1.9 in spending. That includes defense, foreign aid, Federal LE, salaries, etc.
We (the generic “We”) are the problem because we’ve allowed growth in entitlements (- the $4.6 billion) to grow until it dwarves everything. Not just dwarves everything super dwarves everything! We want to do it because we want to ‘do good’, ‘be good’, ‘sounds good’, ‘help everyone’ and anyway it seems to be ‘someone else’s money’ so we don’t care! If we want to blame someone or something we need to pick up a mirror!
All your suggestions are just nibbling at the edges! It doesn’t tackle the real problem. You could zero out discretionary spending and we are still headed over a financial cliff! None of this is made up I took it off the USG CBO’s own web link. See link below.
Any politician who has had multiple terms in office particularly Congress and voted for these financial monstrosities year after year should spend the rest of his\her life in stocks in the town square and be spat upon. They are too stupid and irresponsible for normal life.
Perhaps that’s too harsh we enable them, we vote for them!