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Reason.tv: Budget Deficits for Dummies or, How I learned to stop worrying and love $1.4 trillion

The U.S. budget deficit for fiscal year 2009, which ended in
September, was a
record-shattering $1.4 trillion, equal to about 10 percent of
Gross Domestic Product. In case you're wondering, the previous
record had been set in...2008.

$1.4 trillion dollars is a lot of money and it's hard to get your
mind around that figure. One way to appreciate the sum is to
think of it in terms of all the things that you could buy with
that dough. The budget deficit, for instance, would pay for more
than 1.2 billion nights at Rep. Charles Rangel's vacation condo
in the Dominican Republic. And that's just for starters.

Don't worry if you have trouble doing the math, because
you'll get another chance next year. The Obama administration has
just released its estimate for the fiscal year 2010 budget
deficit. The number?
Another $1.4 trillion.

Approximately 1.30 seconds. Written and produced by Meredith
Bragg and Nick Gillespie.

Congress Strips New Funding for Mexican Border Fence

In a move being cheered by environmentalists and community groups, Congress on Tuesday sent the White House a spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security which, for the first time, excluded mandatory funding for new construction of the controversial fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Although the Senate in July passed an amendment to build an additional 300 miles of pedestrian fence at the border, that provision, sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), was stripped during subsequent negotiations with the House. The Senate passed the altered bill Tuesday afternoon by a vote of 79 to 19. DeMint voted against the measure.

Michael Degnan, Washington representative for the Sierra Club, a long-time opponent of the fence, issued this statement following the Senate vote:

Our government has already poured billions of dollars into building walls and barriers across 600 miles of the U.S./Mexico border. Although the effectiveness of these walls has never been measured, the negative impacts to communities and wildlife is clear. Border walls have separated families, caused damaging floods and erosion, and fractured habitat and migration corridors vital to wildlife that has been pushed to the brink of extinction.

We hope that this historic action signals a readiness to permanently move our country’s border policy beyond construction of costly and destructive border walls.

The Senate’s Two-Day Work Week

So this is what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) meant when he said he was canceling the week-long Columbus Day recess to work on health care reform. From Roll Call:

The Senate next week will continue its relatively light floor workload, with the chamber expected to be in session only from Tuesday afternoon through midday Thursday — even as House leaders are expecting a full week of work.

As Mel Brooks said, it’s good to be the king.

World War II US Defense Spending

DURING WORLD War II defense spending in the United States exploded from two percent of GDP in 1940
to a peak of 42 percent in 1945 and then back down to seven percent by 1947.
But the data series of “Federal Government Expenditure, by Function: 1902 to 1970” in
the Census Bureau’s
Historical Statistics of the United States: From Colonial Times to 1970
only tabulates federal spending every two

May 11 Updates: Full US Budget

On May 11, 2009, the US Government Printing Office published the full US budget for FY 2010, including the customary Historical Tables, the main data source for usgovernmentspending.com.We have now updated usgovernmentspending.com with the new FY10 data. This means that:The home page charts and tables are now updated with the latest data on spending, deficits, and US federal debt using numbers

State GDP Information

Historical State GDP
USgovernmentSpending.com obtains historical State GDP for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia from the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
The BEA produces two state GDP series, an SIC-based series up through 1997 and an NAICS series from 1997 through the present. Against the recommendation of BEA, we have spliced the two series

Update: State and Local Spending

Up till now, usgovernmentspending.com and usgovernmentrevenue.com have shown state and local spending and revenue prior to 1992 as combined state-and-local numbers. The Census Bureau provides tables of state-and-local spending and revenue in its annual Statistical Abstract and in the retrospective Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970.But the Census Bureau also