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Questions Answered by The Budget Analyst
Finding the Numbers and What They Mean:
How do I find out about funding for Federal
agencies? How do I start to research their budgets?
Types of dollars and what they mean - outlays,
authority, constant, real, and actual.
What is the Federal budget for
1999? For 2000? For 2001?
What is the Federal budget deficit
this year? Other years?
How do I find historical information about
the budget?
Where can I find out about what
makes up the government's income?
Where can I find information on
Social Security?
Trust Funds Use. The Abandoned Mine
Reclamation Fund
How Much Money is Spent on Foreign Aid?
Who gets the most?
How Much is Grants Funding
for the National Endowment for the Arts?
What is the income distribution
of those who pay taxes?
What is the money in the budget used
for? What is the tax per person?
Allocation of Money to Certain Areas -
Teen pregnancy
Extravagant Parts of the Budget
How do I find out about funding for Federal agencies?
How do I start to research their budgets?
 | Information on the total Federal budget as well as details for each agency and certain
programs is found in the DOCUMENTS developed to explain the
budget request. Go to LINKS, where you will find links to
the web sites that have budget information. |
| The information you are looking for may well be in the Budget of the United States,
which has summaries for major programs and major areas where the money is used. Many
questions are answered by looking in this document. (Most of the questions I get
about specific budget numbers can be found in the overall budget documents.) |
For links to the overall budget, use the BUDGET part of the
links page. (I do not have the links here because I keep them up to date, and it is
more efficient to have all links in one place.)
At the budget site, you will find PDF format documents for the whole set of documents
related to the President's budget; there are also some spreadsheets with government-wide
numbers. If what you are looking for happens to be a matter of interest to the
President for policy reasons, there may even be a special analysis or table that provides
exactly the information you want.
The Budget of the United States has tables that list the main functional
categories under which the Federal budget is classified. The classification is
followed by short descriptions of what makes up each category. In many cases, you
should be able to find most of what you look for in these areas.
If you need more detail, you can go on to the Appendix to the Budget, also
available at the site with the Budget. The Appendix includes the financial schedules
for each agency, broken down by appropriation accounts, trust funds, etc. (The
documents are also available in printed and CD ROM versions, for sale by the GPO - about
$100 for the paper documents, $14 for the CD. Your library may have them.)
| If the information is not in the overall budget for the whole government, then you may
have to search the additional materials for each agency. Go to the sites of the
various Federal agencies. |
| Most agencies have details about their budget request available at web sites. For
example, if you are looking for Headstart information you may try the Department of
Education. If you are looking for information on nutrition programs, such as WIC,
you should go to the USDA (Department of Agriculture, where the FOOD, NUTRITION, AND
CONSUMER SERVICES is in charge of WIC). The LINKS page
provides access to agency web sites with budget information - use the Agency
Requests and Numbers section of the links. |
Back to List of Questions
Types of dollars and what they mean - outlays, authority,
constant, real, and actual.
| After you find the information in the budget documents and related analyses, you need to
keep in mind what types of dollars you are looking at. First thing you have to keep
clear is the distinction between budget authority and outlays: Budget authority is
what Congress allows an agency to spend, and outlays are the actual expenditures of money.
In many cases outlays have long after the budget authority has been granted.
For national budget discussions and presentations, the numbers usually used are outlays
(the Federal surplus or deficit is expresses in outlays). Appropriations are usually
expressed in budget authority. |
| The other distinction is "constant" or "real" dollars and actual
dollars. Most of the data on the budget is in actual dollars, or whatever was recorded at
the time that the actions took place. All accounts are kept in actual dollars, and the
historical records are simply summaries of accounting information. But to understand
what may have happened over time, the changing value of the dollar needs to be accounted
for. As the value of the dollar changes (generally through general inflation), the
comparability of the accounting records becomes suspect and distorted. Economists use
deflators to account for inflation, that is, adjustments are made to the numbers to make
them comparable. The resulting numbers are called "constant" or "real"
dollars because they give you an idea of what the numbers would have looked like if there
had been no change in the value of the dollar. This is fairly standard practice, but it is
not always easy to tell which numbers are used. |
| The tables that use constant or real dollars are usually footnoted to indicate the base
year, or the year that is used as the base for adjustment is identified. You can find a
good source of adjusted and not adjusted budget numbers in Appendix B to the Economic
Report of the President (link at links). For example, for the report that goes with the FY
2000 budget request, tables B-20 and B-21 (starting on page 350) give you the same
information, but one is in real dollars. The inflation adjustment factors or indexes are
given in tables B-60 to B-68, starting at page 395. You can use these factors to convert
actual dollars to adjusted (or constant or real) dollars, or to convert constant dollars
to actual dollars. It involves a little math, and a spreadsheet is a very useful tool to
do this since there are many numbers involved when you are dealing with many years. (The
index numbers should also be available in spreadsheet format at the site where the Report
is - keep going deeper into the site, and eventually you will get to spreadsheets in Excel
and 123 formats.) |
| For future years, the Federal government uses inflation indices that are provided by OMB
as part of its guidance under OMB Circular A-76. You can access A-76 through the links;
look for OMB circulars, and when you reach A-76 look for the transmittal memorandum. The
transmittal has the numbers.) |
Back to List of Questions
What is the Federal budget for 1999? For
2000? For 2001?
Back to List of Questions
What is the Federal budget deficit this
year? Other years?
| The budget deficits and surpluses for the past year and projections for future years are
given by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB). Information on past deficits and surpluses and other budget related matters
can also be found in the Economic Reports of the President. The appropriate
documents and reports are accessible through the BUDGET links. |
| The CBO
report that first reported the large total budget surplus, assuming a freeze in
discretionary spending after 2002, reported (dollars in billions, years are fiscal years): |
|
Fiscal Year |
Actual 1998 |
1999 |
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
|
Amount |
$70 |
$107 |
$131 |
$151 |
$209 |
$225 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fiscal Year |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
|
Amount |
$265 |
$305 |
$374 |
$421 |
$465 |
$514 |
These amounts are for the consolidated budget, or the net result of taxes and
expenditures for social security and other government operations. For details on
each, and whether or not there will be a surplus without counting social security, you
should consult the CBO reports.
| You can also get general information on the public debt at the Public Debt Office's web
site, http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov.
This site has extensive historical data on the total public debt of the U.S.
For other historical information on the make up of the debt, use the CBO and OMB reports
and the Economic Report. The information about the deficit that you can find is
illustrated in the following example (all $ in billions): |
|
Year |
Total National Debt |
Surplus or (deficit) |
Budget |
|
1945 |
$50.7 |
$4.0 |
$34.5 |
|
1967 |
$340.5 |
($8.6) |
$157.5 |
|
1980 |
$909.1 |
($73.8) |
$590.9 |
The data on the budget and surplus or deficit comes from page 421 of the Economic
Report of the President 1999, Table B-78.--Federal receipts, outlays, surplus or deficit,
and debt, selected fiscal years, 1929-2000 [Billions of dollars; by fiscal years],
available at http://www.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2000/pdf/1999_erp.pdf.
This is a large PDF file, with a long download time if you use a modem. You can find the
table in text format at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/multidb.cgi.
Note that this is the result of a search at URL http://www.access.gpo.gov/eop/
for "budget deficit" (without the quotation marks), search result No. 6. You may
have to repeat the search to get to the document. The first URL may not work.
The data on the cumulative debt comes from Table 7.1—FEDERAL DEBT AT THE END OF
YEAR: 1940–2003, in THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 1999, HISTORICAL TABLES, page 110. You
may find the equivalent table in the FY 2000 budget at the above web site; I used a CD ROM
from last year, but the historical data should not change from one year to the next.
These reports may also be available in libraries either in paper or CD form.
Back to List of Questions
How do I find historical information about the budget?
| It is in the Budget. For FY 2000, the web site with the budget
materials has a "Section 1--Overview of Federal Government Finances, Table 1.1--
Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits (-): 1789-2004." There are
links to spreadsheets. There are also many other summaries; some of them may be of
interest to you. |
Back to List of Questions
Where can I find out about what makes up the government's
income?
| The Department of the Treasury's Financial Management Service's web site,
http://www.fms.treas.gov,
has this information. The types of information at the Financial Management Service's
site include total receipts and receipts by source (such as income taxes and excise
taxes). Look for the Reports and Statements. |
| For example, for FY 1996 individual income taxes represented 45.2% of receipts while
corporate income taxes were 11.8% of receipts. |
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Where can I find information on Social Security?
| You should also visit the Congressional Budget Office,
where you should use the search page and search for "social security" (without
the quotation marks); you will find papers such as "SOCIAL SECURITY AND PRIVATE
SAVING: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE" and "RAISING THE EARLIEST
ELIGIBILITY AGE FOR SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS" and many other directly relevant
documents. You should also search Thomas,
the Library of Congress' laws search site and look for social security and pensions. |
Back to List of Questions
Trust Funds Use. The Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund
I received a question that involved finding information in the budget as well as an
opinion on the use (actually, failure to use) of funds accumulated in a trust fund.
This was my response:
| You can find the basic facts about the fund starting at page 546 of the Appendix to the
Budget. The fund is expected to have a balance of $1.8 billion at the end of FY 2000. What
the numbers show is that more money comes in than goes out - this is fairly common for
most trust funds since this is one technique for reducing the Federal budget deficit. (And
is one of the reasons why there is talk about a surplus.) |
| Whether or not the money will be released at a rate that would expend it each fiscal
year is clearly a political decision. Implementing such a decision would also involve much
work - the money is used for specific clean up projects, and I see no way in which $1.8
billion would be effectively used in one year when the current rate is less than one sixth
this amount. There would be management problems, as well as much waste involved. The
political decision that has to be made is that the fund will increase its activity so that
expenses outpace income. In this way, in a few years there may be a declining balance.
This decision, evidently, would have to be made by a new administration since the current
one has already decided to increase the fund's balance - it grows from year to year in the
current budget. |
| The fund (the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund) was set up by Public Law 95-87, the
Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, enacted on August 3, 1977. Title IV deals with
Abandoned Mine Reclamation, and created the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund in the
Treasury. The statute required operators of coal mines to pay into the fund quarterly fees
of $.35 per ton of coal produced by surface mining and $.15 per ton of coal produced by
underground mining, or ten percent of the value of the coal in the mine, whichever is
less. I am sure that there have been amendments along the way. |
| I hope that this information is sufficient to get you started. If you want to dig into
the whole history of the program, you would have to do much more research. You may also
want to visit the Department of Interior's web site and look at the strategic plan that relates to the
abandoned mines work. For research into the legislation, you should use Thomas (link
at links page at this site). |
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How Much Money is Spent on Foreign Aid? Who gets the
most?
| There is no simple answer to your questions. First of all, the term "foreign
aid" means different things to different people. You will have to decide what you are
looking for. I will point you to some sources. |
| For information on the overall Federal programs related to international aid, go to
pages 141 and 173 of the FY 2000 Budget of the United States (accessible through the links). These sections of the budget summarize all activities that
could be called "foreign aid." But the Budget does not give you details by
country. To get insights as to who gets what, you will have to piece parts together,
including material from a report by CBO,
and the Agency for
International Development's budget request (note that AID's budget does not include
military assistance). You may also have to search other budgets, based on what you decide
after reviewing the Budget materials. |
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| These materials indicate that "Grants, subsidies, and contributions" funding
for the National Endowment for the Arts was $83 million in 1998, is expected to be $83
million in 1999, and the budget request is for $131 million for 2000. |
Back to List of Questions
| To find the information, go to the Congressional Budget Office site. There is a
study (Estimates of Federal Tax Liabilities for Individuals and Families by Income
Category and Family Type for 1995 and 1999, May 1998) which can be found at the following
URL: http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=527&sequence=0&from=1#pt2.
Go to Table 2. The answers are there, with the most recent year being 1996. For
this year, the annual income group of $0 to $10,000 paid -1% of Federal income taxes (a
negative number means they got more than they paid); $10,000 to 20,000, 1%; $20,000 to
30,000, 5%; $30,000 to 50,000 14%; $50,000 to 75,000 17%; $75,000 to 100,000 12%; $100,000
to 200,000 17%; $200,000 to 500,000 14%; $500,000 to 1,000,000 7%; and $1,000,000 or More
15%. This study on the Internet is in PDF format, so you need the Acrobat Reader to
look at it. It is also over 300KB in size, so it takes some time to download. |
Back to List of Questions
What is the money in the budget used for? What is the tax
per person?
| The Citizen's Guide to the Budget, available with the budget materials, provides the
information. For FY 2000, Chart 2-6 is a pie chart of what the budget is for. There
are other tables and charts with tax and expenses information. |
| The average tax per person you can get by looking up the appropriate value on Table 2-1
of the guide and dividing by the population of interest (I do not know exactly which taxes
you have in mind - payroll taxes, which are social security and Medicare, are taxes too).
(The population figures you can get from the Census Bureau.
Total population in mid-1999 was about 272 million.) |
Back to List of Questions
Allocation of Money to Certain Areas - Teen
pregnancy
The question was: I am trying to find a chart, or even numbers, on
how much the federal budget allocates to certain areas. For example, I am doing a project
on teen pregnancy, and I would like to compare the money spent on teen pregnancy to say,
the military, social security, national parks, etc.
The answer:
| The types of information you are looking for is generally
available in tables in the basic budget document. At the FAQ I state, in part: "The
Budget of the United States has tables that list the main functional categories under
which the Federal budget is classified. The classification is followed by short
descriptions of what makes up each category. In many cases, you should be able to find
most of what you look for in these areas." (Hint: They budget document is a PDF file,
for which you need the Acrobat Reader; the reader has a search function that will let you
search the document for key words such as "teen" or "pregnancy.") |
| By following this advice, you should readily (but it will take some time to look up the
numbers) find the numbers you want to use for comparisons. You may have to go to other
sites to find information on teen pregnancy because this topic is probably not in a single
program. I suspect that most of the expenditures in this area are by state governments,
using some Federal grants and some of their own money. |
Back to list of questions.
The question was: I have been assigned a project in history class....I have to
find the ridiculous items in the recently proposed federal budget that are so ridiculous,
they are ludicrous....like 1.4 million spent studying why elastic is used in some clothing
and not others....etc.
The Answer: You can find the whole Omnibus Appropriations Bill (which I believe
is what your teacher has in mind) at http://thomas.loc.gov/. There is a special link
to it. The whole bill is in a 3.8 MB PDF file, so downloading it could take a while.
There is no substitute to the reading of the whole thing to find "the ridiculous
items" (in your words) in this appropriation. An example of the items is "The
conference agreement also includes $4,800,000,000 under Title III, for Salem State College
in Salem, Massachusetts to integrate computer technology into an institutional facility to
create a smart building." This may or may not be ridiculous. It all depends on
how you look at it - I am sure that the president of Salem College worked hard to get
Congress to fund this project, and future students may well like the result. On the other
hand, if you are not interested in Salem College's fate but in that of another school then
this could well represent a ridiculous waste of Federal taxpayer money. It is your choice,
so you will have to read and decide. (I am sure that there is a problem with the
amount since I don't think that Salem College is to get billions of dollars - probably
more like a few million, but this type of problem with the bill may also count as a
ridiculous item, or may be a typo on the web site.)
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Back to FAQ Introduction Page |
