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Total: $3,858 billion ($3.858 trillion)
Click here to see a more complete breakdown of the budget.
This website provides users with an opportunity to go beyond rhetoric and think about the federal budget in a specific, concrete, and realistic way. In the interactive exercise, you will view the federal budget as it exists today, and you can propose specific percentage reductions in the items you think should be cut. If you think federal spending should be reduced, you can go through the budget line by line stating exactly what you would cut and by how much. If you do not think expenditures should be significantly reduced, you can make that clear by going through the exercise and not making large cuts. Once you have gone through the 34 spending categories that basically comprise the budget, the calculator will tell you how much your recommendations would decrease overall federal spending.
One way to reduce the deficit is to decrease expenditures, and the other way is to increase tax revenues. This site is interested in users' ideas about both. After you have made your recommendations for spending cuts, you can indicate which options for tax increases you would favor. This part of the site does not calculate a dollar amount of deficit reduction because the tax code is so complicated and the effects of tax increases are complex, but users can indicate how they think revenue increases could be used to reduce the budget deficit.
Politicians and pundits often make budget-cutting sound easy by discussing it in general terms, but the goal of reduced spending becomes more difficult when one confronts the specific programs that would have to be cut to produce significant reductions in the deficit. (It is easy to find tiny cuts that might feel satisfying but would have no noticeable impact on the deficit, e.g., defunding NPR). This site will collect information about users' ideas for spending cuts and tax increases, and this information will be available to politicians who wonder how various ideas for deficit reduction would be received by the American people.
I hope our politicians and pundits will come to the site and do what our users do. If they go through the budget, stating what they would cut and by how much, I will verify their identities and show what they propose, so citizens can see the substance beneath their rhetoric. I hope they have the courage to do it, because the general idea of budget-cutting is more appealing and popular than the concrete process of doing it.
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To improve the quality of our national discussion about the federal deficit by moving beyond rhetoric and focusing on the specific components of the budget.
To educate the public about federal spending by providing clear information about the budget's components.
To enable users to describe, in a specific and quantified way, the federal budget they think would be best for America.
To challenge the nation's political and opinion leaders to translate their rhetoric about the budget deficit into specific recommendations for cuts in particular programs. (We will verify the identities of well-known public figures before presenting their names.)
If you believe in what we are doing, we welcome your support. Donations are gladly accepted and will be used for the sole purpose of maintaining this site.
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