Thursday, February 18, 2010

An Interesting Way to Look at Obama's Budget...

President's are required to present a budget to Congress and Obama did his 2011 budget recently. This is largely ceremonial as I can't recall the last time the final budget was the same as the proposal (for as long as I have been conscious of the process, they are almost always declared DOA, even by the President's own party).

The New York Times prepared an interactive graph of the budget. You can see a snapshot below or go to the interactive version.
So go ahead and snoop around. Find the things you would like to cut...some of the biggest political hot potatoes in terms of spending are pretty hard to find amongst all those teeny tiny squares. If nothing else, it shows the answers to the deficit problem may not be quite as easy as some politicians would have you believe.
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3 comments:

  1. kkditherFebruary 19, 2010 at 11:22 AM

    The interactive website is really cool. After looking long enough to get the big picture of the suggested slating of money, and being nauseously wowed by the numbers, I stayed there about an additional 2 minutes.

    I shop at Aldi's because they have one brand of peanut butter and I know it is the lowest price of any other store; I only have to choose creamy or chunky. I can't imagine putting together this monster of a document.

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  2. hale-boppFebruary 19, 2010 at 2:27 PM

    This graphic is necessarily simplified since there are so many little projects covered by each agency, you can't show everything (although I think it is useful to show the big picture).

    What I want to see now is a similar chart that adds up all the government revenue and where it comes from.

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  3. OrbsCorbsFebruary 19, 2010 at 11:33 PM

    Geez, too much information, especially those little squares on the lower right.

    Where in the defense budget do they hide Black Ops and Area 51?

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