One way to look at this amount of money -- $5.3 trillion over two years -- is how that breaks down for every person in the country, called per capita: It's $17,385 per person for two years, or about $8,690 per person per year.
Another way to look at is how much money does the U.S. Government spends per each worker, those who are employed. During the second quarter of this year, there were about 146 million people with jobs. It comes to $18,150 per employed person per year.
Page 19 of this table will show you a summary of where the government gets its money. Page 22 shows a summary of which agency gets what.
And we've all heard of earmarks. Well, you can find out what is being spent on these little jewels. The Office of Management and Budget has the information.
Our government has grown so large that no one can control it, a concept offered in this article called Insatiable Government by Garet Garrett:
There are many aspects of government. The one least considered is what may be called the biological aspect, in which government is like an organism with such an instinct for growth and self-expression that if let alone it is bound to destroy human freedom — not that it might wish to do so but that it could not in nature do less. No government ever wants less government — that is, less of itself. No government ever surrenders power, even its emergency powers — not really. It may mean to surrender them, but on the first new occasion it will take them all back. One of the American Government's wartime powers was the War Finance Corporation. The present Reconstruction Finance Corporation is a revival of that power in time of peace. And so it goes.
This was first published on June 25, 1932. We haven't learned. From the New Deal to Johnson's War on Poverty, we've allowed the government to control just about everything we do. This is not freedom.
It will only get worse, unlesss we do something about it.
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