Current Events > interest payments on the nation's debt will exceed federal spending on children

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-spending-kids-in-the-us-is-at-its-lowest-level-in-12-years/

If children really are the future, their outlook looks underfunded. Government spending on America's kids has dipped to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to a new report from the Urban Institute.

The share of the federal budget allocated to children dipped to 9.2% in 2018, the lowest since 2007, the nonpartisan think tank found. That trend is likely to continue under current law, with the analysis projecting that federal spending on children will shrink to 7.5% of the budget by 2029...

The reasons for the decline in kids' spending in recent years isn't entirely due the country's aging population. By 2029, the share of federal money spent on children will decline by one-fifth, but the share of the population under age 19 will shrink slightly, from 24% to 23%.

The bigger cause, the report noted, is that three major federal programs Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid consume ever larger shares of the budget. Forty-five percent of the federal budget went toward those programs last year, a figure that will reach 51% in 2029, the report projects.

That's not to suggest that these programs should be cut in order to increase spending on children, Hahn noted. Social Security alone is credited with lifting more than 15 million seniors out of poverty. Rather, it suggests a need to examine health care spending in Medicaid and Medicare, Hahn said, adding that the subject is beyond the scope of the current report.

By 2020, interest payments on the nation's debt will exceed federal spending on children, the report found. The Urban Institute forecasts that annual interest payments on the national debt will reach $740 billion in 2029, compared with $420 billion for spending on children.

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The plan is to have the removal of environmental regulations kill off a good portion of that generation, so there's not really a budget problem.
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What total non-story this is.
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The bigger cause, the report noted, is that three major federal programs Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid consume ever larger shares of the budget. Forty-five percent of the federal budget went toward those programs last year, a figure that will reach 51% in 2029, the report projects.

Key problem identified. We say "kids are the future" but spend the largest portion of the budget on entitlement programs for the elderly.

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The Admiral posted...

Key problem identified. We say "kids are the future" but spend the largest portion of the budget on entitlement programs for the elderly.

Well, Medicaid is the biggest source of federal support for kids so that one is arguable but that is true for medicare and SS for sure

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The Admiral posted...

The bigger cause, the report noted, is that three major federal programs Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid consume ever larger shares of the budget. Forty-five percent of the federal budget went toward those programs last year, a figure that will reach 51% in 2029, the report projects.

Key problem identified. We say "kids are the future" but spend the largest portion of the budget on entitlement programs for the elderly.

I like that your tone comes across as you doing some great feat of political science and economics to figure this out when you really just reworded the part of the article you quoted.
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The Admiral posted...

The bigger cause, the report noted, is that three major federal programs Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid consume ever larger shares of the budget. Forty-five percent of the federal budget went toward those programs last year, a figure that will reach 51% in 2029, the report projects.

Key problem identified. We say "kids are the future" but spend the largest portion of the budget on entitlement programs for the elderly.

Baby boomers molded the nation to work for them, not us. In their day, you could work as a janitor and support a large family with a single income. The norm for many jobs was to work at a place for 30+ years and then retire and have that company continue to pay you for the rest of your life along with getting social security benefits from the government.

Now, if you're a janitor, you can't afford jack crap and you likely need 2 or 3 jobs to get by unless you work your way up the ladder in whatever field you choose to work in to get a decent enough income to even afford to live on your own. We're paying into social security every paycheck and we probably won't even get to use it once we're old enough because the money is going to run out.

Baby boomers told us that we absolutely have to go to college if we expect to do anything with our lives while refusing to understand that the world was changing. Lots of people go to school and rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt for a degree that they may not even use in their careers.

Technological advances have created a plethora of new jobs that people are generally unprepared for. The world is connected more than ever and this trend is continuing more and more. I can video chat with people from other countries in real time. Our parents told us we'd never be able to make a living playing video games. To be fair, most people trying to stream video games online don't make a decent living, but there are definitely people who make ridiculous amounts of money just playing video games online.

Baby boomers prepared their children for the world they lived in and not the world we would actually experience.
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Are you saying we should spend less paying back the debt, and more on the children so we can further increase the debt?

Also free healthcare and colleges for all.
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CableZL posted...

Baby boomers prepared their children for the world they lived in and not the world we would actually experience.

I get what you're saying, but how exactly where baby boomers expected to see the future? Particularly with how quickly these have changed in the last few decades.
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interest payments on the nation's debt will exceed federal spending on children

and the children will pay for it too, unfortunately
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Jabodie posted...

CableZL posted...

Baby boomers prepared their children for the world they lived in and not the world we would actually experience.

I get what you're saying, but how exactly where baby boomers expected to see the future? Particularly with how quickly these have changed in the last few decades.

As a grown adult, I would think you would be much more... "aware..." of how the world is changing than your children would be.

That Hidden Figures movie illustrates an example of this very well. It's about these black women who worked at NASA in 1961 as mathematicians. The civil rights aspect of it aside, NASA mathematicians were doing all of their calculations with basic calculators and by hand on paper and blackboards.

At one point, IBM installed a computer that would take the place of human mathematicians and do their job incredibly more efficiently. One of the women saw that the computer would essentially be able to do her job and would probably replace the entire team of mathematicians if it worked. So at one point she decided to steal a book about the Fortran programming language that the computer operated on from the whites only section of the library to learn how the computer worked. Because of that, she not only learn how it worked, but also knew how to fix problems with the computer. She went even further and taught the other women she worked with to spread the knowledge to them.

The computer did end up replacing the mathematicians, but because the women knew how to operate and maintain the computer by that time, they were able to continue working at NASA in other departments instead of just getting laid off like the other mathematicians.

I get that this is a rare trait, but I would hope that more people will think about how the world is today and how upcoming changes in technology or whatever else could affect the future when raising children instead of just teaching children the way of the world they grew up in and leaving it at that.
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Essentially, the thinking that "My dad/mom/parents/whatever did X for work so I'm going to do X and my kids will do X" will often end up screwing either you or your descendants over at some point unless you pass on enough capital for the future generations to adjust without feeling too much pain.
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trumps america
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Hanky_Bannister posted...

trumps america

well its really more the congressional republicans who pushed the TCJA but yeah

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