History
Prior to the Great Depression, nearly all federal expenditures were discretionary. However, following the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, an increasing percentage of the federal budget was devoted to mandatory spending. In 1947, Social Security accounted for just under five percent of the federal budget and less than one-half of one percent of gross domestic product (GDP). By 1962, 13 percent of the federal budget and half of all mandatory spending was committed to Social Security. In 1965 Congress created Medicare, a government administered health insurance program for senior citizens. In the 10 years following the creation of Medicare, mandatory spending increased from 30 percent to over 50 percent of the federal budget. Though the rate of increase has since slowed, mandatory spending composed about 60 percent of the federal budget in FY 2012.
Read more about this topic: Mandatory Spending
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)