It's The Entitlements, Stupid

Yesterday I wrote a post responding to a Grand Forks Herald editorial that was, in turn, a response to a post here on the blog. In the editorial, Herald opinion editor Tom Dennis blamed Republican election losses on conservatives being insufficiently compassionate as measured by their support for social entitlements.

I objected, writing that I could agree with Dennis if it “weren’t for that pesky reality of cost.” ”

“Compassion is all well and good, but then there is this other thing called ‘math’,” I wrote. To that point, here are some charts from a study conducted by the St. Louis Fed which breaks down US spending by type. As you can see, while defense spending has grown of late, the major problem areas in federal spending are social entitlements. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and “other payments to individuals” are by far our largest areas of problem spending (via Hot Air):

Here’s another chart breaking down mandatory spending (mostly entitlements) and discretionary spending (mostly military and everything else the feds do):

It’s nice to be compassionate, but how compassionate is it to explode spending on entitlement programs, running up debt our children and grandchildren will have to pay off?

That’s not compassion. That’s greed.