I have been wondering what the “Other Mandatory Programs” are. It shows up in the federal budget under the “Mandatory Programs” section – its value somewhere between Social Security and Medicare. The 2012 budget allocates $598B for the other mandatory programs. But I googled for a while and found:
Other categories of mandatory spending:
- Unemployment compensation
- Supplemental Security Income
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps.)
- Other federal retirement and disability programs provide benefits to federal civilian employees, members of the military, and veterans
- Commodity Credit Corporation (Farm Subsidies)
- Medicare-Eligible Retiree Health Care Fund (DoD health care plan)
- subsidy costs of federal student loan programs
- Universal Service Fund (which reduces the cost of telecommunications services for selected areas and individuals)
- Children’s Health Insurance Program
- Social Services Block Grant program
Individually, each of these programs don’t amount to much, but combined they are very big (as this CBO presentation shows).