Letter to the Editor: Reader offers budget education

Subject: A good interpretation of the Federal Budget

If anyone is puzzled by the effort to "substantially" reduce federal spending and is confused by the absolutely huge numbers involved, the following is a primer to understand why this issue is so critical to our country's economic health. It also portends to the mountain of federal debt faced by our children and our grandchildren.

Federal Budget 101

The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so we created a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms. Let’s put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:

Total U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000

Annual Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000

New debt: $1,650,000,000,000

National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

Recent budget cut: $38,500,000,000

(about 1 percent of the budget)

It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Let's remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family.

Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700

Amount of money the Jones family spent: $38,200

Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500

Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

Amount cut from the budget: $385

So, in effect, last month Congress, or in this example the Jones family, sat down at the kitchen table and agreed to cut $385 from its annual budget. What family would cut $385 of spending in order to solve $16,500 in deficit spending?

Joe Wollman

Odessa

[Editor’s note: The information cited by Wollman was supplied by the Heritage Foundation.]