> Federal Budget Summary

• Issue: How much money should the Government distribute and how it should be distributed.

In 2002 the Federal government plans to collect and spend about 21% of the nations income, "GDP". {See Budget Facts} Thus about one of every five dollers will be used to spend on things that we have decided, through our government, to purchase cooperatively rather than individually, for example for such things as:

• Missle Defense rather than private Gun.
• National Highways rather than a Newer Car.

Like many other disucssions, there are lots of "Sound Byte" ways of preventing people from discussing the issue or developing consensis positions, these are: "Its your money", "Robbing the Lock Box", "Just cut the Waste", etc.

The real questions for people who want to discuss the issue are:

1. What do we feel we want to spend our money for cooperatively, e.g. forcing everybody to contribute to also, and then of course how muchshould be spend on each program that we want to fund?
2. How is the money to be collected to fund these programs, and how are the collecton policies to be "adjusted", e.g. do we use Head Tax, Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, etc., and how are these programs setup to Tax one group versus another?.

As a way of "thinking" about the budget, I have developed an analogy, I hope that it is useful and not biased, It thinks about the Government as a family who is the major stockholder in a widget company: For more detail See Analogy.

• Also see: Public Agenda and NewsBatch on the budget and tax issue

Otherwise you may proceed to other issue related pages:

• Phillips, Kevin Wealth & Democracy in America [Commonwealth club audio, 30 min, 6/04/2002]

Also see: Bush, Fy 2002 budget proposal, Feb 2001

• Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2004 (CBO's Current Budget Projections)
  • Analytical Perspectives, (3.2 MB)
  • Historical Tables (2.3 MB)
  • Mid-Session review -- ( 2.4 MB)

• Summary   Positions   Facts   Polls   Discussion   Also_See

April 25, 2004 17:04