You've got to separate federal taxes from state taxes to understand how the US spends its money. In general the federal government is well funded and squanders its money on wasteful and unnecessary defence projects, such as having more aircraft carriers than conventional military wisdom says that they need. Such things don't enhance the US's defensive situation. The F-35 is another great example.
But states are generally underfunded, because lowering taxes is always popular and easy to do in state politics. State budgets are dominated by boring things such as education which an aging electorate often cares little about. And states are always in competition with their neighbours with regards to taxes, so raising sales tax might actually push more shopping across the state line to your neighbour. Couple that with the situation in California where any tax increase has to be voted on by the general public as a "proposition", and you get a scenario where adequate state funding becomes almost impossible.
> Also, the Feds fund a wide variety of state operations, especially in social services and transport.
And education too. Money supposedly ear-marked for special education and free-and-reduced lunch floats many rural school districts; maybe there's a similar story for urban districts, but I wouldn't know about those.
Also, most if not all US states are required to run a balanced budget. This can result in cuts when forecasted revenues don't match actuals. The Federal government simply borrows more money and kicks the can down the road.
"Also, most if not all US states are required to run a balanced budget. This can result in cuts when forecasted revenues don't match actuals. The Federal government simply borrows more money and kicks the can down the road."
This is a misnomer that I see quite frequently: "states must run a balanced budget" and it leads to the exact terrible conclusion you came to: "only the federal government kicks the can down the road".
This is totally wrong. State governments can and do assume debt (generally issue municipal bonds) to cover short term deficits. They play funny money all over their budgets so they can mask what they're doing, but when states like Kansas cut hundreds of millions of highway funding to plug budget deficits, then repeal laws on debt caps and make the department of transportation issue record levels of debt to continue those projects, that's what they're doing. They're taking debt (issuing bonds) to plug deficit holes caused by lowering taxes.
Specifically about 60% of the total budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA subsidies and safety net programs. Then we have your 20% (16% DoD and 4% VA), then 6% goes to interest on the debt, and the remaining 14% is everything else.
Though FWIW the percent of the budget spent on the military was (for somewhat obvious reasons) quite a lot higher during the Iraq war.
Actually, we spend quite a bit on education. From The National Center for Education Statistics:
> In 2011, the United States spent $11,841 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, an amount 35 percent higher than the OECD average of $8,789. At the postsecondary level, U.S. expenditures per FTE student were $26,021, almost twice as high as the OECD average of $13,619. (see [1])
And when it is spent on infrastructure, the US leads most of the world in being the most expensive place to build public transportation, with projects often taking far longer. I blame corruption, poor governance and deep cultural disdain for organization and order.
Don't even get me started on the California decision to build HSR between SF and LA. What a joke that one is.
A half century ago, the federal and state civil services weren't, I think, unionised, which means that politicians couldn't be bought by unions to give civil servants more benefits to increase union dues to buy more benefits to increase dues to buy more benefits.
We spent four billion dollars for a train station. And then we raised ticket prices on the path train for a beautiful station nobody wants. Why?
> To win these concessions, Larry Silverstein took advantage of the Port Authority’s eagerness to show some progress on the site. He played hardball with the government from 2004 to 2006, a period of acrimonious negotiations between Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority over who would be responsible for what aspects of the site.
> His lobbyists were the best of the best. He hired Global Strategy Group, whose clients have included Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo, to lobby for him, along with David Samson, who would go on to become the chairman of the Port Authority.
> Given the choice between making Larry Silverstein pay his way and trying to get the site finished as quickly as possible, the Port chose the more expensive option. (Whether it worked is debatable—3 World Trade Center is a stump, and 2 World Trade Center is nonexistent; both are awaiting tenants to restart construction, with delivery now slated for 2015 and 2016.) The feds were throwing even more money at the Port Authority—nearly $2.9 billion—and it was the path of least resistance.
It is mind boggling that a seat on a train to cross the hudson river costs as much as a ticket on the MTA. I don't have any inside information and I don't know who to blame for this (perhaps there is no point in blaming anyone other, everyone did what was in their personal best interest) but this does bring a point that we can't just throw money at infrastructure problems. We have to be judicious about it.
The twitter feed of @pathtrain https://twitter.com/pathtrain is littered with problems of signal failure on a bridge on the Newark World Trade Center line. I bet they could use some of that four billion dollars to fix that issue. But of course, the federal money is not for trivial things like that. They have a monument to build!
I guess this is something we need to think about in many government projects, not just at the federal level. We say that we spend more than $12k? per child in our school system and raise pitchforks and say the teachers aren't performing well enough for all the money we pour into the school system. Well, perhaps we are not pouring money at the right places. And no, I'm not advocating we get rid of public funding and make school administrators or teachers start a go fund me for their salaries or costs. That would not solve anything. These are difficult questions for me. I don't think our politicians and bureaucrats are making the right call here but I don't think it is right to leave these questions up to a ballot measure either.
It's more like how the money is being spent. The political landscape is totally binary so the only question allowed is whether something gets done or not. Once the decision has been made it gets done in the least efficient way and no further questions are asked. Or it gets stopped.
Just look at Obamacare: There is no public discussion about the details that could use improvement. Either it's all in or people want to totally cancel it. Nothing in between.
