A Visual Representation of the US Federal Budget

If you don't already know it, you must look at this site (click on “view the graph”), which provides a complete graphic representation of US Federal Funding. All the agencies are represented with their FY2007 appropriations. On the left-hand side is military funding and on the right-hand side is non-military funding. It is mind-boggling!

The total Federal budget this year is $983 billion (what is called the “Federal discretionary spending budget”) of which 64% is spent on the military. The graph contains a lot of information, including the yearly variation with FY06 as the baseline.

Check the budgets of the various agencies, it is very interesting. For instance, the Department of Agriculture receives $19.717 billion this year (a bit less than the entire budget of the New Zealand government) and food subsidies are increasing by 5% to $16.623 billion (and this is not part of the DOA's budget). The Federal government spends $2.178 billion on rural development, $563 million on labor statistics, $3.978 billion on “exploration systems” in space, and $722 million on the Andean Counterdrug Initiative. It also spends $3.846 billion on the US Postal service, $906 million insuring the well-functioning of competition and markets (the SEC), and $278 million on flood control on the Mississippi River. $1.545 billion are spent on the Food and Drug Administration, while the Supreme Court receives a budget of $76 million. The most important institution in the US is very cheap to run, which goes to show that a small state would be very inexpensive.