by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
Go back and read this Ticker, and the link in it on the actual budget deficit we ran last year (no, it’s not the nice number you see at the top of the MTS.)
The budget deficit was in fact $1.4 trillion — not the claimed $587 billion (which is bad enough, incidentally.)
Last year the Federal Government spent $1,417 billion dollars out of $3,854 billion, or 37% of every dollar it spent, on Medicare and Medicaid. This was a 9.3% increase over last year’s expenditure of $1,296,731 (million), all-in.
But inside this figure are even-more damning numbers.
Payments to the health care trust funds were up 13.4% (!)