Government Spending: Health Care v. Prisons
Friday, August 21, 2009 at 10:13AM An opinion:
Astonishingly, many politicians seem to think that we should lead the world in prisons, not in health care or education. The United States is anomalous among industrialized countries in the high proportion of people we incarcerate; likewise, we stand out in the high proportion of people who have no medical care — and partly as a result, our health care outcomes such as life expectancy and infant mortality are unusually poor.
Kristol argues we should ration back our spending on prisons and redistribute those tax dollars to education and health care.
But what is the Government spending money on? Take a look at Federal spending in 2004:
(Source: The Tax Foundation. "Special Report: Who Pays America's Tax Burden, and Who Gets the Most Government Spending?" March 2007. PDF)
At the Federal level, a little more than half of all spending goes to health care, welfare & disability, Social Security, and education. Less than a quarter of Government spending is on the military (~22%), and a similar portion goes to the misleadingly labeled "Other" category -- which includes Federal prisons.
Things are different at the State, ie the spending sector that Kristol criticizes.
Government spending, public policy in US Government 