Government contractors spend quite a bit of time analyzing federal spending (see article below) and deciphering whether total contract spending will grow and, if so, where.  Taking a broader view of total government spending, though, puts contract spending in a whole new perspective.  Numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that nearly three-quarters of federal spending is for such “mandatory” programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest payments on the federal debt.  That’s up from about a dozen years ago when that number was “only” about two-thirds.  Today, all “discretionary” spending, which includes federal employee salaries and benefits, accounts for a little under 28% of all federal expenditures.  Taking the analysis a bit further, the CATO Institute estimates that federal “purchasing” accounts for only 13% of all federal spending activity.  While government contract spending is important to a wide array of businesses, therefore, the real spending action is happening a couple of football fields away.  The unfortunate news for contractors is that those fields are populated by politically untouchable footballs.  Even the hint that a Senator or Congressman might, one day, touch the earnings of a future Social Security recipient, even for a worker in their 20’s, brings a sharp political rebuke from the other side.  That means that contractors should expect pressure to cut the part of the federal budget that funds their projects.  Regardless of the fact that stopping all federal contract spending today would make practically no dent in total federal outlays, the fact remains that this arena is the only one in which elected officials feel safe to propose cuts.  So, while it may be impressive to see the ranks of government contractors arrayed on, say the Dulles Airport access road in northern Virginia, remember that, overall, this market is a small part of the federal spending game.