Bupkis and Not-so-Bupkis in the US Budget

My colleague Ed Kleinbard sent me some of the CBO tables re the US Budget.

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/45229-UpdatedBudgetProjections_OneColumn.pdf

I am ashamed to say I have never spent much time looking at these numbers. They are a revelation, I believe.

1. Revenues from the corporate income tax is rather small compared to individual income taxes, and is in fact something like 1% of the Gross Domestic Product. You'd think that corporate titans would be more concerned with their own income taxes--but this shows how corporate-spirited they are

2. Discretionary Expenditures divide into domestic and defence, and they are roughly the same.

3. The various mandatory expenditures (Social Security, Medicare,...) dominate the discretionary ones.

...  More to follow.

MK

PS. BUPKIS is a Yiddish term for something so small it does not matter.