Yep, the federal government is still an insurer with a large army
Just for fun, I ran the 2011 numbers to see how the “insurer with a large army” description of the federal government held up. Before interest payments, the federal government spent $3.3 trillion in 2011. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security accounted for about $1.5 trillion of that. Defense spending ate up another $838 billion. All other spending -- everything from farm subsidies to education to infrastructure -- came to $900 billion. The final tally: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and security spending took up fully 68 percent of the budget last year.
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Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to MSNBC and Bloomberg. His work focuses on domestic and economic policymaking, as well as the political system that’s constantly screwing it up. He really likes graphs, and is on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. E-mail him here.
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