Mandatory Spending Vs Government Budget

Words: 1208
Pages: 5

INTRODUCTION Behind every country whether it be Democratic, Communist, Monarchy, or Dictatorship has a budgeting or spending plan implemented to fund and run the government set up. This is true for the United States and United Kingdom where one is solely Democracy and the other is a Monarchy. These two super power countries generate revenue for spending yearly, but when taking a closer look at records it shows that each country spends a different amount in different aspects of their government. A budget is set up to forecast a Governments expenditures and revenues for a specific period of time. The period covered by a budget is usually a year, known as a financial or fiscal year. This so called Fiscal year either follows the calendar year, …show more content…
The money raised for future budgets come from income taxes, tariffs, and social insurance payroll taxes placed on people. This process starts when the president in office proposes a budget for the year and has to be then pushed and approved by congress before taking effect. From this stage the budget gets dispersed among various programs, and or agencies. In 2015 the U.S. government had a fiscal budget of $3.8 Trillion dollars, which is split into three sections: Mandatory spending, Discretionary Spending, and Interest added onto the ever growing National Debt (Federal Spending: Where Does the Money Go, 2015). Mandatory spending which is $ 2.45 Trillion goes into programs like Social Security, Medicare, and other programs like Transportation, Food & Agriculture, and Veteran Benefits. The Discretionary spending ($1.11 Trillion) is the part of the Federal budget that Congress can decide how to spend the money. By far, the biggest category of discretionary spending is the military, at an alarming $600 Billion dollars. From there it trickles down among things like Education, Government, Medicare, Transportation, and so on(Federal Spending: Where Does the Money Go, 2015). The budget of $3.8 Trillion dollars is not only massive but five times that of United Kingdom’s allotted budget of …show more content…
This is done so for the purposes of corporation tax and government financial statements to be submitted. The fiscal budget of 2015 was $760 Billion pounds, this budget is a tremendous difference from the massive United States 2015 fiscal budget. The process starts with the current Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers his Budget statement to Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. The first part of the statement typically begins with a review of the nation's finances and the economic situation(The Budget and Parliament, 2015). From there once the House of Commons looks over the statement it then moves on to proposals for taxation. The provisional taxation is key for collecting the money need for the new budget. Everything from tobacco, alcohol, to personal tax is discussed and included. Once the taxes are decided on it finally moves to a Finance Bill which is presented to Parliament, and from there they are voted into laws. This year alone the budget was $760 Billion pounds which was split between Education, Defense, General Government, Public Pensions, Social Security, Transport, and other sectors. The highest allotted of money from the budget goes not into defense like the United States, but rather into Public Pensions. The defense budget only gets $45 Billion dollars compared to Americas $600 Billion(Public Spending Breakdown,