Moon...Mars

[Vetiria]

And not spending what will end up being over $200 billion before we leave Iraq would have helped a lot more.



If all else fails, google it.

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/pol-1.for_aid.4.pdf


I have no idea how reliable these numbers are, but the total percentage of our GDP we give in foreign aid is 0.1%. How exactly would that help with anything? A third of it shouldn't go to Israel, I agree with that, but there's no reason to cut off aid to places like Africa and Egypt. As I see it with those numbers, we don't give enough money in foreign aid.

Edit: That wasn't in reference to your question Raist, I didn't see that part of your post.

[Chmee]

If you go back 55 years, 1 billion dollars is a outrageous number. Averaged out, its like 2.2 billion a year. Pool that money along with the countless other countries that we give "billions" to. I'm pretty sure not only would that help our debt, it would also help out a lot of our funding in such as medicare and other much needed programs.


Does anyone know how much money from income taxes the united states brings in each year?

Although I certainly wouldn't mind if we got rid of a substantial portion (if not all of it) the money we pay to other countries is pretty minor when you look at the overall budget.

All numbers are from the spreadsheets at ...

http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2004/hist.html

I pulled numbers for the 2002 fiscal year because anything past that are estimates. If you go look at the spreadsheets though you can see the numbers from 1940ish through estimates of 2008 I believe.

debt 2002 6,198 billion
deficit 2002 157.8 billion

Note that deficit is how much more we are spending than we are taking in in a given year. The debt is the accumulated debt we currently have.

receipts 1853.2 billion
outlays 2011 billion

So the federal government took in roughly 1.8 trillion total in receipts in 2002. To break that down into different categories ...

Individual income taxes 858 billion
Corporate income taxes 148 billion
Social insurance and Retirement Receipts 700 billion
Excise taxes 66.9 billion
Other 79 billion

Out of that the amount for international affairs ...

International affairs 22 billion

And breaking that down into its subfunctions ...

International devlopment and humanitarian assistance 7.8 billion
International security assistance 7.9 billion
Conduct of foreign affairs 7.0 billion
Foreign information and exchange activities 0.9 billion
International financial programs -1.3 billion

So even if we completely eliminated international affairs (and that would mean getting rid of things like embassies etc. I believe) would only reduce the deficit for 2002 by an eigth,

The big hitters as far as expenditures go

social security 456 billion
Defense 348 billion
Income security 312 billion
Medicare 230 billion
Health 196 billion
Net Interest 170.9 billion

[Chmee]

By the way, this all is just federal taxes. State taxes and spending are on top of this.