A website called TheBudgetGraph.com offers a visual representation of federal spending based on President Bush’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2007. (Click here, then click on “View the Graph.”) It is truly a monstrosity.
But look more closely and you’ll notice that it only counts budget items to which Congress must fix a dollar amount every year. It completely ignores those parts of the federal budget where the dollar amount is set automatically by formula. (Those two categories are usually called “discretionary” versus “mandatory” expenditures, but that bifurcation is misleading. Nearly all expenditures are discretionary, with the possible exception of interest payments on the national debt.)
That latter category — which includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest payments on the debt, etc. — comprises 63 percent of the federal budget. That makes “The Budget Graph” more like “a visual guide to where one-third of your federal tax dollars go.”
Were the graph to count the entire budget, heck, I’d probably buy the poster.
(HT: Frederic Sautet.)
