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The Federal Budget can be a big pain to actually sit down and read. Here it is explained in plain english. The graphs, tables and charts in the website really help a lot. Also an excerpt from the website talks about the ambiguity present in the budget:
Overall, Departments like Agriculture show great detail while other departments like that of State use broad language and provide few clues into what programs will actually receive the billions. Unsurprisingly the National Intelligence Agency has no details about either total budget nor allocation. The mandatory spending, which totals an additional $2.184 trillion, allocates $695 billion to social security, $453 billion to Medicare, $290 billion to Medicaid, $11 billion in a potential disaster relief fund, $164 billion to pay off interest on the national debt and the remaining $571 billion to miscellaneous expenses.
$571 billion on miscellaneous is a lot of money!
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I find it extremely odd that of the $2.184 trillion allocated that only 11 billion dollars is going into potential disaster relief fund especially after many disasters in past years.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very helpful site that shows exactly what the government is spending money on and I do agree $571 billion dollars is a lot of money just for miscellaneous expenses. Hopefully they put it to good use. After glancing at this budget I do like how Obama is trying to strengthen schools as I feel they are the hardest hit in this crisis due to severe budget cuts. I also think that it is a good idea to increase the federal pell grants which will help out college students afford rising college costs.
ReplyDeletewith the disturbing amount of debt our country is currently in, and has been for what seems like forever, nearly everything in the proposed budget calls for an increase... I'm not sure how the plan will help us go from a "$1.56 trillion deficit in 2010 that will be reduced to $1.27 trillion on 2011 and approximately $700 billion in 2012". I really wish we were allocating more to education though
ReplyDeleteI feel that this does a great job at showing the double-standard that the government lives by. Congress has constantly asked for transparency from businesses during the financial crisis, yet they don't reveal what most of the money is actually going towards. I guess thats the problem when there is little oversight for those who control the flow of the taxpayer's money...As stated before $571 billion is a lot of money
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ReplyDeleteOn Dana's point: This highlights pretty clearly the idea of "debt intolerance" in this week's reading. No administration likes to cut spending or raise taxes especially during a recession when the other party would quickly draw causal links between those policies and negative economic progress.
ReplyDeleteIt seems ridiculous 571 billion dollars can have a "Miscellaneous" label attached to it. That type of money should have a clearly defined plan of action as to what it will be used for and why it is necessary. I also agree with Ben in that 11 billion seems insufficient after what we saw in New Orleans.
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