July 22, 2013
Responsible Budget Reporting
Are you concerned a proposed farm bill would spend $195 billion on farm subsidies over the next decade? How about $80.35 billion spent on food stamps last year? Would you be more or less concerned if it were $1.95 billion and $8 billion?
Would you have any idea what these numbers mean?
We’ll even do it for you:
I would like to see this expressed as
Dollar Amount
of Program/Cut/Etc*
$
Over
Starting
Percent of Budget
0%
* Confidential to the New York Times: 1 million = 1,000,000 (six zeroes); 1 billion = 1,000,000,000 (nine zeroes); 1 trillion = 1,000,000,000,000 (12 zeroes).
Source: Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook, Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023; Census Bureau; and basic arithmetic.
