April 15 is "Tax Day." Of the 68,351 government entities in the U.S. with the power to tax, the federal government is the largest, the income tax is the most visible, and April 15 is when we're most aware of how much we're paying. But what doesn't get quite as much attention is where the money goes, and the net effect. Put simply, with corporate and high-income tax rates slashed, and social services cut way back, most of the income tax money is coming from lower and middle classes, and going to corporations and the very wealthy.

One of the major reasons this trend doesn't get much attention in, say, corporate media (besides the obvious reason) is that the feds themselves disguise the nature of spending. A typical government press release on how federal money is proposed to be spent in FY 1998 looks like this:

50% Direct benefit payments for individuals 15% Grants to states and localities 15% Net interest 15% Military 5% Other federal operations

Charts like this fuel the myth that welfare queens and out-of-control social programs are the cause of rampant government overspending. But there are a few things wrong here.

First, the above percentages include trust funds (like Social Security) as well as general fund dollars (which is where income taxes are deposited). Since Congress has no say over trust funds in the federal budget--they just sit there--it's irrelevant to policy decisions. The government started listing trust funds in budget figures during the Vietnam War, to disguise the size of military spending. Bureaucrats aren't as dumb as you think.

About military costs: that 15% is strictly Department of Defense. It doesn't include the U.S. nuclear weapons program (under Dept. of Energy), NASA funding (primarily military), the CIA or any of the secret National Security Act agencies, or discretionary money available to the President for foreign adventures. It also, of course, doesn't include the costs of past of the interest on the national debt. Add it all up and direct militarism accounts for 49% of discretionary federal spending in FY 1998.

The "benefit payments to individuals" is also misleading. The largest chunk of it is Medicare--most of which doesn't end up with individuals at all, but in the inflated wallets of health care providers, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies. Every other major spending sector--Education, Health and Human Services, HUD housing subsidies, food stamps, the Labor Department--has been continuously cut back and/or shipped out to the (more conservative) states under Bill Clinton.