Interesting Perspective on Debt Deal
“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:
U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Budget cut: $ 2, 100,000,000,000 ( CBO estimated )/ Annualized over 10 years (210,000,000,000)
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: $2,100
So in effect last month Congress, or in this example the Jones family, sat down at the kitchen table and agreed to cut $210 from its annual budget. What family would cut $210 of spending in order to solve $16,500 in deficit spending?
It is a start, although hardly a solution.”
