Each spring, both the Associated Student Government and the United States federal government allocate their budgets. This is the meat and potatoes of any government: collecting cash from one source and doling it out elsewhere.

Student groups and professional lobbyists jockey for a piece of ASG’s $700,000 budget and the federal government’s $1.9 trillion pool.

In both cases, a few allocations receive a large proportion of the funds. As The Daily recently reported, A&O Productions and Mayfest alone received a combined 44 percent of finance board recommendations, and three federal programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – received about 42 percent of federal revenue in fiscal year 2001.

Now let’s contrast. Northwestern students learn something about how ASG spends their money. The Daily covers it. Senators and student group heads talk about it. So even if A&O gets a large share, a majority of campus probably considers this a just allocation.

But from the standpoint of most students, the feds might as well budget in secrecy. Did you know Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid get 42 percent? And did you know that by 2030, some projections place them at 75 percent of federal revenue? Politicians do not discuss this in public, so the national press rarely reports it.

Politicians discuss the 10-year budget projections that run from 2001 through 2010. In 2011, the Baby Boom generation (born beginning in 1946) starts turning 65. Federal budget simulations begin to change, rapidly.

As Comptroller General David Walker testified in the Senate on Feb. 6: “It is important to remember … that while projections for the next 10-year period look better, the long-term outlook looks worse. Without a change in entitlement programs, demographics will overwhelm the surplus and drive us back into escalating deficits and debt.

“To move into the future with no changes in federal health and retirement programs is to envision a very different role for the federal government … Our long-term model shows a world by 2030 in which Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid … would require more than three-quarters of total federal revenue. Little room would be left for other federal spending priorities such as national defense, education and law enforcement.”

If you think the federal government should also fund education, job training, science, technology, housing, transportation or foreign aid, we have a situation here. Funding for these programs has already fallen from 23 percent of the budget in 1966 to under 19 percent in 2001.

It is true that long-term projections are unreliable. As Walker also testified, models “overstate (the problem) because they assume Congress and the president would take no action to change the cost structure of these programs.” So the scenario outlined above almost certainly will not occur.

We will approach it, however. At some point, we as a society must decide how much to spend on entitlements. To be just, that “we” must include you.

Overall, if you care where your money goes, you can’t afford to tune out ASG nor the feds entirely. Of the two, the federal spending is more important. But much, much easier to ignore.