Slashdot Mirror

Well some individuals have created a nice chart that you can buy.
The Budget Graph

You might notice the center shows some percentages, and my guess is it will more or less go into the slice accounting for the biggest percentage (i.e. National Security/Defense.

The Death and Taxes Poster breaks up all government budget outlays greater than $200 million. The link provided is a Flash Movie (so you can zoom in) but it takes a super-long time to become clear enough to actually read (at least for me).

You might find "The Total Budget" section with the Penny in the bottom-right corner to be helpful.

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/site/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1

For everyone debating about how the budget should be spent. Check the site and i'm sure you'll find plenty of things you are willing to cut before nasa.

That is completely false. Of the discretionary budget of ~1 trillion. $717 billion goes to military/national security. The Department of Defense gets 481 billion directly with 145 billion allocated separately for the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan. Demolishing the pentagon would have a huge impact on the federal spending and would reduce by at least 480 billion, but it would throw us into a major recession because so many jobs rely in the military industrial complex.

The overall budget is approximately 2.9 trillion but Social Security(608 billion), medicare (386 billion) and medicaid (202 billion) are paid for by separate taxes and are not discretionary spending.

More on the budget http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/site/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1

It is not 21%, it is more like 67%

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/

Lets keep it in perspective. NASA's FY 2007 budge was about $17.310 Billion out of a $2.8 trillion total budget. That means that NASA represents about 0.6% of the federal budge. Compare this to the $699 billion defense budge or even the $27 billion expended for agriculture, and you can see where our priorities lie. There were about 133 million individual tax returns filed last year. Therefore On a per individual tax payer basis, NASA's budget represents a cost average of about $130 per individual taxpayer (not including corporations) per year. Compare this to the defense budget to works out to about $5,250/year.

Trillions of dollars my ass. Guess where most of your (and my) tax dollars are going?
NASA? Wrong!
Here's a little visual guide for your entertainment: http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/poster/
Try finding NASA (clue: it's a tiny circle at 4 o'clock of the center).

I can see there will be no way of convincing you otherwise as with comments like "the US military is the police force of the world" you're obviously of the opinion that it's the US's job to protect all us other helpless little countries.

But your comment of : "Education (K-12) is already being given ungodly amounts of money" is just pure fallacy.

See here.

Defense spending gets 54Billion dollars out of 983Billion, while your precious military gets... wait for it... 439Billion dollars!

Almost HALF of all the tax money collected goes to the military, while a measly 5% goes to education.

And you think that's right?

That's just insanely stupid... insanely so.

And, to make it even simpler, try this: The U.S. Defense Budget, Explained with OREO Cookies

It just doesn't make sense.

But hey, if you'd prefer to think that it's the US's 'job' to 'police' the world then you just go right ahead.

Perhaps you meant: Death and Taxes: A Visual Guide to Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go rather than the domain squatting site budgetgraph.com.

Actually I got them from the OMB's report on the 2003 budget. Just because the "mandatory" parts of our budget require changes in law to change them, doesn't mean you can just cut out 2/3 of the budget and not even consider where the money goes. I can use your numbers, but I'm going to use the big picture. Medicare and Medicaid do count, even though you pretend they don't exist ($670+ B), since they are defined by coverage and not cost, and costs are spiraling out of control while the government tacitly accepts the "market" price (average 15% increase per year for those programs).

The 2007 budget graph conflates the military spending with the more-or-less direct cost of the Iraq war. I agree that the Iraq war is a true and total waste of money; You'll notice I mention it in the GP as a waste. That wasn't what GGP said though, they referred to "the military". That's what I disagree with; I think the 17-18% spent to maintain our military is fine, as it is a low fraction of our GDP (4%), and ranks us 26th in the world. The growth of 7% per year should preferably be a lower, but compounds a lot slower than 15% (5 versus 11 years to double). If the Dems get us out of Iraq in some timely fashion, I don't expect that 7% increase to last that long either. When it comes to total health costs, however, we're #1 in the world as %GDP, and we don't even have the best care. Thus as you might expect, the total for all the social programs is going nuts, and is not going to be maintainable.

In short (using your source for numbers, including the war), giving the military a day off would save $1.7B, so the GGP was off by a factor of 9 regarding NASA's budget. After the war, it will be a factor of 11 off. I think it is a common misconception, so I was just calling that out, that's all. Say and think whatever you want.

Complete BS. Did you just pull the figures out of a random orifice?

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/view.html

2007 Federal Discretionary Budget
Military: 632 Billion (64%)
Non-Military: 350 Billion (36%)

Of which, the Global War On Terror alone, SEPARATE from the upkeep costs of the branches of service, is costing 110 billion. The ENTIRE Department of Health and Human Services, including the FDA, the NIH, CDC, etc - costs just about 68 billion. The entire Department of Education is 54 billion.

In other words, government-spending wise, the war - not the military, just the war - is costing about as much as Health and Education combined.

What was that about Health Care eating up everything?

Cute graph, but it's actually quite different from the law which was just signed. The graph you linked only lists overall spending by various departments, while the database created by the law will actually show the individual contracts and grants given out, and (more importantly) the companies and districts which will receive the money.

Besides that, the "Budget Graph" you linked is actually rather misleading. It only plots discretionary spending (which is just about one-third of the federal budget), leaving out entitlements like social security, medicare, and medicaid. Even in the site's FAQ they say that "adding a large circle for Social Security would have made the whole graph unbalanced." Here's their graph which includes entitlements:

http://thebudgetgraph.com/forums/index.php?topic=6 .0

There is already a very nice, pannable/zoomable diagram on federal tax dollars.

www.thebudgetgraph.com

For an accessible view of the budget, check out at the poster "Death and Taxes".

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/

They just want to put this guy out of business. Great poster.

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/view.html

The budget graph already does this. Why spend money when it's already out there?

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/view.html

Actually the 466 billion you mention is for the Department of Defense, it doesn't include the spending on the War on Terror, the Coast Guard, the National Nuclear Security Administration and a bunch of other spending which is basically national defense. If you total them up, it works out that the US spends about 630 billion on defense.

http://thebudgetgraph.com/view.html

With that proportion of the economy involved in getting blown up and destroyed it's not entirely surprising the economy is in trouble.

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/

Most of it is paid by borrowing rather than taxation, but the increased money supply simply kicks inflation and therefore interest rates into high gear. It'll get worse as the Arabs liquidate their dollar holdings.