the budget

A lot of people’s eyes glaze over when they hear about a “budget”—whether

it’s for a business, a club, or the government of the United States.

Yet the government has enormous influence on our lives because of the

way it collects our money and spends it for various purposes. Its spending

priorities are reflected in its budget.

Unless you understand roughly what the budget includes, your opinions

may be completely irrelevant. For example, according to an

excellent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes

(PIPA), a majority of Americans believe that the US spends too much

money on foreign aid. They estimate that 20 percent of the federal budget

goes to foreign aid; they would reduce this amount to 5 percent. In

fact, the federal government devotes less than 1 percent of its budget

to foreign, nonmilitary aid. Anyone who calls for aid to be cut to 5

percent has an irrelevant opinion, because he or she doesn’t understand

what the government does.

Here, then, is how the federal government spent an average

tax dollar during the years 1998-2004 (2003-4 are estimated).

The data come from this

OMB document, but I have made decisions about what programs to put

in each category. The federal government is responsible for about two-thirds

of all taxation, although it gives some of its funds to states. States

and local governments together raise about one third of all taxes. (Source:

OMB.)

The "all other" slice in the chart above is distributed as

follows:

Here is how an average state tax dollar is spent. Data from National

Association of State Budget Officers, State Expenditure Report, 2001

(Summer, 2002).

And this is an average county budget from 1996-7, based on the US Census

Bureau’s survey of county officials