Help My Friend Balance the Budget! (Need graphs/statistics)

[TheTyke]

I have a friend who is majorly stressing out because of a school assignment to propose ways to balance the budget. Apparently the consequences of this project are dire, so I wanted to help her out.

I think the main thing missing are charts and statistics of how our money is currently being spent in the 2009 or 2010 budget. They've been looking, but are having a hard time finding just the objective facts - not opinions/proposals. Does anyone know a good source for these? This would be a HUGE help.

Finally, a point of clarification - balancing the budget just means you're not spending more than the revenue you take in, correct? Some on the project are trying to make it about eliminating the debt itself - and that would be a lot less believable... :O

Feel free to move this thread into Economics after a bit - I'm mainly after a good source of spending (& revenue) charts, and thought I'd find one faster posting in General. Thanks in advance for any help!

[Knightskye]

Tell him to check out CATO's website, http://www.downsizinggovernment.org.

Yes, balancing the budget means spending less than or the same amount as you take in.

[Zippyjuan]

You can probably start with the 2010 US Budget on Wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget

Total receipts
Estimated receipts for fiscal year 2010 are $2.381 trillion, an estimated decrease of 11% from 2009.

$1.061 trillion – Individual income taxes
$940 billion – Social Security and other payroll tax
$222 billion – Corporation income taxes
$77 billion – Excise taxes
$23 billion – Customs duties
$20 billion – Estate and gift taxes
$22 billion – Deposits of earnings
$16 billion – Other
[edit] Total spending

A pie chart representing spending by category for the US budget for 2010Further information: Government spending
The President's budget for 2010 totals $3.55 trillion. Percentages in parentheses indicate percentage change compared to 2009. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:

Mandatory spending: $2.184 trillion (+15.6%)
$677.95 billion (+4.9%) – Social Security
$571 billion (−15.2%) – Other mandatory programs
$453 billion (+6.6%) – Medicare
$290 billion (+12.0%) – Medicaid
$164 billion (+18.0%) – Interest on National Debt
$11 billion (+275%) – Potential disaster costs
$0 billion (−100%) – Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
$0 billion (−100%) – Financial stabilization efforts

US receipt and expenditure estimates for fiscal year 2010.Discretionary spending: $1.368 trillion (+13.1%)
$663.7 billion (+12.7%) – Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)
$78.7 billion (−1.7%) – Department of Health and Human Services
$72.5 billion (+2.8%) – Department of Transportation
$52.5 billion (+10.3%) – Department of Veterans Affairs
$51.7 billion (+40.9%) – Department of State and Other International Programs
$47.5 billion (+18.5%) – Department of Housing and Urban Development
$46.7 billion (+12.8%) – Department of Education
$42.7 billion (+1.2%) – Department of Homeland Security
$26.3 billion (−0.4%) – Department of Energy
$26.0 billion (+8.8%) – Department of Agriculture
$23.9 billion (−6.3%) – Department of Justice
$18.7 billion (+5.1%) – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$13.8 billion (+48.4%) – Department of Commerce
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of Labor
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of the Treasury
$12.0 billion (+6.2%) – Department of the Interior
$10.5 billion (+34.6%) – Environmental Protection Agency
$9.7 billion (+10.2%) – Social Security Administration
$7.0 billion (+1.4%) – National Science Foundation
$5.1 billion (−3.8%) – Corps of Engineers
$5.0 billion (+100%) – National Infrastructure Bank
$1.1 billion (+22.2%) – Corporation for National and Community Service
$0.7 billion (0.0%) – Small Business Administration
$0.6 billion (−14.3%) – General Services Administration
$19.8 billion (+3.7%) – Other Agencies
$105 billion – Other


You might notice that the deficit (the difference between what you spend and what you take in in taxes) was estimated to be about $1.2 trillion and the expenditures in the "discressionary spending" (cutable spending) was $1.4 trillion so trying to get a balanced budget will be very tough and require tax increases. Good luck!

[TheTyke]

Thanks for the resources folks! I think it will help a lot... I've passed them on.

Despite the stress my friend is undergoing, I think this is actually a pretty cool project... it's like people are starting to seriously consider this stuff now! :)

[NYgs23]

The Death and Taxes poster can help:

http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

[NYgs23]

You might notice that the deficit (the difference between what you spend and what you take in in taxes) was estimated to be about $1.2 trillion and the expenditures in the "discressionary spending" (cutable spending) was $1.4 trillion so trying to get a balanced budget will be very tough and require tax increases. Good luck!

Why can't you cut entitlement programs?

[Zippyjuan]

You will have to- but you can't do it immediately. You can do things like phase in an older retirement age or lower benefits for those who have not yet qualified, but you have to wait until those people actually retire before you realize any of those savings on your budget and that will be years into the future. The only way you can make any meaningful steps towards balancing the budget involves the big ticket items which includes Social Security and the Department of Defense and the raising of taxes but doing any of those involves going against some very strong and powerful interet groups. Any politian proposing them or voting for them would be committing political suicide and be voted out of office in the next election. Remember Bush Sr and "Read my lips- No new Taxes!" Once he recognized that he had to raise taxes to keep the deficit from getting too large, he agreed to raise taxes and was voted out the next election.

[oyarde]

Why can't you cut entitlement programs?

You get nothing without cutting medicare spending .

[Zippyjuan]

You have to look at EVERYTHING. Unfortunately one person's wasteful spending is another person's critical program. But if you target everything then you share the pain and have a better chance of getting others to go along (or more reason for everybody to gang up you for proposing cuts!) The president has to make it a critical thing to reduce the deficit and get the citizens convinced it has to be done- then you can start to argue over how to do it. It certainly won't happen overnight.