The Heritage Foundation: Federal Spending by the Numbers

This is a must read piece by budget expert Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation.

Federal Spending: By the Numbers:

The national debate over federal spending has been hampered by a lack of accessible and reliable budget data. Budget debates involve numbers, and yet these numbers are vulnerable to creative slicing and dicing in order to prove one point or another. Exasperated taxpayers are left not knowing how exactly their tax dollars are being spent and what fiscal challenges America faces.

Before the nation can come together on federal budget solutions, it has to agree on the basic budget facts. This paper provides 11 pages of tables, charts, graphs, and bullet-point explanations of recent trends in federal spending. Updated with the most recent 2006 budget estimates, most of the underlying data come directly from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Download Federal Spending: By the Numbers (PDF, 140 kb)

On page 10 of the report is the excellently sourced section entitled 'Are Anti-Poverty Programs Being Slashed?' which highlights the following graph:

Related: 'The United States would not pass Sarbanes-Oxley review' which makes reference to the excellent report recently released by Comptroller General of the United States David M. Walker in which he states:

For the ninth straight year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is unable to provide an opinion as to whether the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government are resented fairly, in all material respects, in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles...