Discretionary and Mandatory Expenditures - Essay Example

As a result, mandatory expenditure has to remain unaltered in the process of the annual budget. From the federal spending, $247million was directed towards repayment of the national debt approximated to be $17 trillion. Conversely, the remaining government spending of about 33% accounted for discretionary spending. Discretionary expenditures are established for a precise time extent by the Senate and House appropriation committees. The statistics from Chantril indicate that mandatory expenditures occupy more than half the budget and have their spending level set by the statute for senior programs, income support programs, and other retirement and disability programs.

Under the discretionary spending, military spending accounts for two thirds while the other discretionary expenses account for a third. Given the fast increase in National debt interest payment ($247 billion) and the allocations to social security ($1.361 trillion), there is a need to cut government discretionary and military spending (gpo.gov). The military savings are expected to result from a reduction of military personnel, procurement, research and development, military construction and family housing.

With such drops in spending for a period of 10 years, it is anticipated that military spending will be about 14.7% of the discretionary budget by 2022. Other areas affected by budget reductions are education programs, protection through border security and another spending like weather monitoring and food inspection.