{"id":5140,"date":"2007-02-06T15:11:11","date_gmt":"2007-02-06T15:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5140"},"modified":"2007-02-06T15:11:11","modified_gmt":"2007-02-06T15:11:11","slug":"the-federal-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5140","title":{"rendered":"the federal budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the day after the president released his 2008 budget, it might be helpful to take a longer view. Below I show the percentage of the total budget (also known as “your tax dollar”) that is devoted to each major category of federal spending. I’ve set the total for every year to 100%, but of course the actual size of the budget has grown enormously. The last year (2008) is the president’s proposal, which will not be implemented as he wishes. On the other hand, his proposal will not be changed enough to make a visible difference on a graph at this scale.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The graph is helpful in making a few points that I don’t think most citizens realize. First, you cannot cut spending appreciably without touching defense, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. (Interest payments are automatic.) Second, Medicare and defense are the two items that have expanded rapidly of late. Third, some categories that provoke opposition, such as foreign aid and grants to artists and scholars, are far <\/em>too small even to be illustrated. Finally, despite all the storm and stress over important details, both of our major parties are basically committed to the same kind of budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the day after the president released his 2008 budget, it might be helpful to take a longer view. Below I show the percentage of the total budget (also known as “your tax dollar”) that is devoted to each major category of federal spending. I’ve set the total for every year to 100%, but of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}