Obama: ‘We’re Not Lavishly Spending on a Whole Bunch of Social Programs’ (+video)

Photo Credit: AP/ Evan Vucci)President Obama told a gathering of business executives on Tuesday that the federal government was not “lavishly spending” on social programs.

“What we know is, is that our — our fiscal problems are not short-term deficits. Our discretionary budget, that portion of the federal budget that isn’t defense or Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid, the entitlement programs, is at its smallest level in my lifetime, probably since Dwight Eisenhower.

“We are not lavishly spending on a whole bunch of social programs out there,” Obama continued. “And in many ways, a lot of these programs have become more efficient and pretty effective,” he added.

The U.S. Treasury Department records the following expenditures on a few of the many social safety-net programs for Fiscal 2013 and Fiscal 2012. In most cases, the amounts increased year-to-year:

–Medicaid: $265.392 billion ($250.534B in FY 2012)

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