Feds take in $5 billion a day, spend $11 billion.

[powderman]

Presidents have been talking about the federal government’s spending appetite for decades.

“We can’t spend ourselves rich,” Ronald Reagan once said.

Even President Obama said that “every day, families sacrifice to live within their means – they deserve a government that does the same.”

In the most recent talks to avoid the looming fiscal crisis, though, House Speaker John Boehner insists the president has been singing a different tune, and is “just not serious about cutting spending.”

But how much spending are we actually talking about? It may be difficult to wrap one’s head around how much the federal government doles out every day, but here is a snapshot. 

Each day during the month of November, the government brought in a little more than $5 billion of revenue. That’s a lot of money – but the U.S. government spent in that time more than $11 billion a day. The difference is roughly $6 billion.




http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/17/cost-spending-federal-government-racking-up-huge-tab/

Of that $11 billion, the top items were as follows: The Department of Health and Human Services, which goes through roughly $3 billion a day; Social Security, which shells out roughly $2.5 billion a day; the Department of Defense, which runs a $1.8 billion daily tab; and interest on the debt, which eats up $854 million every day.

Economists say the latter number is the most concerning of all – since the country gets practically nothing in exchange for that. It’s just paying the bills on the debt, and the number is subject to wild fluctuation. 

[JonnyReb]

 Sickening but at least we're well forewarned of whats possibly coming. No country can operate like that for long.  Good post. J

[BUGEYE]

Nothing will change until the lenders say, no more.
hussein has asked for authority to raise the debt limit any time he wants.

[gypsyman]

Be like going to your credit card company and asking them, well, I know I'm only paying the minimum, and, I've maxed out my card, but, could I please have another couple thousand on credit, it'll get better. Oh, by the way, I'm getting a pay cut, because there isn't as much work as there use to be, but, if I spend more, that will put the other guy to work,(Oh, he lives in China by the way), and pretty soon, I might be back to a regular work week. I hope. gypsyman

[coyotejoe]

It is amazing that there is really no effort by either party to actually ballance the budget. Ron Paul was the only politician to even talk about it and we know where that got him. Even when they do speak of "spending cuts" they don't really mean to "cut spending" but only to reduce the rate of increase in spending. It's like "we're going to spend more than we ever have before but less than we would like to spend so we call that a "cut". Obama says he would like to cut spending by one trillion over ten years but the deficit is currently growing by more than one trillion each and every year so what good is that? And more than half the people, if informed of this at all, will just say "well Bush started it", as if that matters at all. When all the talking is done, nothing will be done.

[Mike in Virginia]

It's a huge problem with a simple answer.  Obama to the head of every federal agency:  "By January 1st, send me your plan to permanently cut 10% from your budget.  If you can't manage that, I'll replace you on January 2nd." 
 

[coyotejoe]

While that would be a drastic action it would not be nearly enough, spending is currently more than double income so spending would have to be cut by something like 65% to balance the budget.