Q: Would you please define entitlements? Some pundits on TV say in a few years entitlements will take up a large percentage of the federal budget. If Medicare and Social Security are entitlements, they are totally separate programs and do not affect the federal budget.
—Joseph A. Tucker, Decatur
A: An entitlement is a "legal obligation of the federal government to make payments to a person, group of people, business, unit of government, or similar entity that meets the eligibility criteria set in law and for which the budget authority is not provided in advance in an appropriation act. The best-known entitlements are the government's major benefit programs, such as Social Security and Medicare," according to the definition on the Congressional Budget Office website.
Unlike discretionary federal spending, which Congress must authorize each year through appropriations acts, the CBO says entitlements are considered mandatory federal spending. Mandatory spending is not normally set by annual appropriations. The CBO lists Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as the nation’s three largest entitlement programs.
In fiscal 2016, 24 percent of the federal government’s $3.9 trillion budget — or $916 billion — went directly to pay for Social Security, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy group in Washington. Another 26 percent of the budget ($1 trillion) paid for four health care programs, including $594 billion to Medicare, the center said. The other three health care programs were the low-income Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance programs, both of which require matching payments from the state, and subsidy and exchange costs related to the Affordable Care Act.
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