China and Federal Spending

I previously made a statement saying we owed China around 16% of our National Debt. I was wrong, we owe much less than that. Citations and such are located on the bottom, relating to their appropriate asterisks.

According to the "Major Foreign Holders Of Treasury Securities"* provided by the Treasury we owe China 1270.2 Billion Dollars as of September 2012. This is equal to $1,270,200,000,000 or 1 Trillion Two Hundred Seventy Billion and Two Hundred Million dollars. According to the U.S. National Debt Clock** the U.S. National Debt approximates to 16270 Billion dollars. When the math is done it is indicated that China owes us 7.8% of our total debt. What's even more surprising is that if you look at the total amount of debt we owe to other countries, according to the same report from the Treasury, all countries combined we owe 4908.3 Billion Dollars, which is less than previous years by the same report.

So now the question remains. Out of our 16 Trillion National Debt and 5 Trillion of that debt is owed to countries, where do we owe the rest of the 11 Trillion to? Well, ourselves. According to the "Expenditures in the United States"*** by Wikipedia the U.S. spent $3.60 Trillion Dollars in 2011 (which is less spending growth than previous presidents according to Forbes^ and other sources) while the U.S. gained $2.45 Trillion Dollars in taxes according to the "United States federal budget"^^ by Wikipedia. Represented in the graph^^^: Our total spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Interest on the Debt, Defense Department, and other Mandatory Spending equals 2952 Billion Dollars, or $2.952 Trillion Dollars. That means, unless Congress cuts spending for all of the programs listed above by a majority vote, it will be IMPOSSIBLE to balance the budget. Discretionary spending only accounts for $646 Billion Dollars, and this includes stuff like road repair, garbage pickup/disposal, police/fire/hospital assistance, etc. You can cut all that, and the budget will not get balanced. So where is the money going? The government owes you money, it owes itself money, money it can't pay off unless serious action is said otherwise. So the next time you harp on a president about not being able to balance the budget, you are going to have to tell Congress to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Defense Department, otherwise, it's impossible.

Main statement, China does not own us. China owns us as much as Japan does, and I don't see anyone complaining about them. We own ourselves, and it will be impossible to be free of that debt to ourselves, unless we make sacrifices.

* http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt
** http://www.usdebtclock.org/
*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget
^ http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/24/who-is-the-smallest-government-spender-since-eisenhower-would-you-believe-its-barack-obama/
^^ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_federal_budget#Major_receipt_categories
^^^ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png