Discretionary Spending

Testimony of Douglas W. Elmendorf,Director, Congressional Budget Office before the
Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction U.S. Congress, October 26, 2011.

"Discretionary outlays—the part of federal spending that lawmakers generally control
through annual appropriation acts—totaled about $1.35 trillion in 2011, or close to
40 percent of federal outlays.1 Slightly more than half of that spending was for
defense. The remainder went for a wide variety of government programs and activities,with the largest amounts spent for education, training, employment, and social services; transportation; income security (mostly housing and nutrition assistance); veterans’ benefits (primarily for health care); health-related research and public health;international affairs; and the administration of justice.

Discretionary outlays declined from about 10 percent of gross domestic product
(GDP) during much of the 1970s and 1980s to 6.2 percent in 1999, mostly because
defense spending, as a share of GDP, declined over that period. Since then, discretionary outlays have risen relative to the size of the economy, totaling about 9 percent of GDP in 2010 and 2011, in part because of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and in part because of the discretionary funding provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, Public Law 111-5). The 2010 and 2011 figures were the highest in about 20 years..."