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Running the government on 8%

Following up on Joseph's post from yesterday, this CNNMoney.com graphic is telling:

From the article:

Today, the United States spends roughly 76 cents of every federal tax dollar on just four things: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest on the $14 trillion debt. That leaves 24 cents of revenue to pay for everything else the federal government does. ...

Barring serious efforts to curb the growth in the country's debt, by 2020 Washington could be spending 92 cents of every tax dollar on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest alone. That would leave just 8 cents to pay for everything else.

It's easy to gripe about government spending and to rail against it generally. It's very hard to figure out how specifically to reduce Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. And yet these are the three areas within our direct control that are going to soak up most of the dollars (interest really isn't within our direct control anymore — that money is spent and interest rates will be dictated by the markets).

Any spending cuts are welcome at this point. But we have to realize — and soon — that spending cut proposals that don't reach to these three specific programs simply aren't going to be enough.

May God give us wisdom and the strength to make the hard decisions that lay ahead.

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