How To Place Federal Budget Numbers in Context
The Center for Economic and Policy Research
has created a calculator that allows users to place specific tax or spending numbers in the context of the total U.S. budget. It converts dollar amounts into either dollars per capita, that is per U.S. citizen, or into a percentage of total revenues, total discretionary spending, or the total budget (including nondiscretionary spending).
It also provides a visual comparison showing the size of the specific spending or revenue item relative to projected defense spending over the time period in question.
Many Americans believe that programs like welfare and foreign aid represent a much larger percentage of the budget than is actually the case.
Better awareness of the facts can only help many of the programs we care about, which are typically quite small in relative terms, despite their large impact.
The calculator also compares budget numbers to total defense spending, graphically showing how much more is spent on the military than on the other roles of government.
For example, the President requested $3.26 billion for "emergency preparedness and response" for fiscal year 2006. That is equal to 0.1 percent of the unified budget and 0.64 percent of defense spending per capita. The additional $62.3 billion appropriated by Congress for Katrina is 2.4 percent of the unified budget and 12.3 percent of defense spending per capita in 2006.
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