From the center for Excellence in Barbiturates, Rush Limbaugh is outraged:

These prescription drug-type programs and other entitlements like them now take up over 60% of the budget. Something has to be done about it, or your kids and grandkids will have tax rates that they’ll simply refuse to pay.

In FY2002, mandatory spending was 59% of all government spending. By 2013 (prior to this week’s Medicare bill) it was expected to be 58%. Which would put it at the same level it has been through the 1990s. Entitlement spending first broke the 50% barrier in 1983 under big government, fiscally conservative, tax cut and spend Reagan. Think the Medicare changes are expensive? The projected cost of $400 billion amounts to 2.6% of all entitlement spending from 2004 to 2013. [Which doesn’t make it a good bill, but let’s simmer down now, shall we?]

Entitlement spending, should you ever take a look, includes such government giveaways as:

Medicaid $148bn
Supplemental Security Income $31bn
Earned Income and Child Tax Credits $33bn
Food Stamps $22bn
Family Support $26bn
Child Nutrition $10bn
Foster Care $6bn
Social Security $452bn
Medicare $254bn
Unemployment Compensation $51bn
Veterans’ benefits $25bn

All figures for 2002. Total entitlement spending for the year $1,195bn.