> A new GAO report says states have reduced their AFDC/TANF spending
> by 15 to 20 percent. Note that this applies to their share of
> the total, which is roughly half.
Indeed. So Federal outlays on the poorest of the poor went up slightly, and state outlays went down a lot -- while Clinton cut capital gains taxes on the monied classes from 28% to 20% or so. I call this barbarism; what do you call it?
> While people noodle around with getting military down from 270 to
> 225B or so, over a trillion and a half dollars of surplus are projected
> over the decade. That's clearly where the big bucks are. Even a little
> more military pork would be a small price to pay for useful domestic
> initiatives.
I hate to break the news to you, but capitalist economies have this little thing called "the business cycle", which is about to wreak havoc with those wondrous budget projections. And that $270 billion military budget is a *huge* chunk (around 30% or so) of Federal discretionary spending (i.e. excluding Social Security, which is a separate line item). And let's not even talk about the millions of human beings slaughtered by US military interventions, past and present.
-- Dennis