Mattea Kramer et al - A Peoples Guide to the Federal Budget

First published in 2012 by

INTERLINK BOOKS

An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.
46 Crosby Street, Northampton, Massachusetts 01060
www.interlinkbooks.com

Text copyright National Priorities Project, 2012
Foreword copyright Barbara Ehrenreich, 2012
Afterword copyright Josh Silver, 2012
Design copyright Interlink Publishing, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A peoples guide to the federal budget / by National Priorities Project.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-56656-887-6 (pbk.)

1. Budget--United States. 2. Government spending policy--United States. 3. Budget deficits--United States. 4. Fiscal policy--United States.
HJ2051.P476 2012
352.4973--dc23

2012007930

General Editor: Michel S. Moushabeck
Editors: John Fiscella, Leyla Moushabeck
Proofreaders: Gayatri Kumar, Katherine Moonan
Charts and graphs: Daniel Gautreau and National Priorities Project staff
Cover and interior cartoons: Tom Pappalardo
Book design and production: Pam Fontes-May

Printed and bound in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To request our complete 48-page, full-color catalog, please call us toll free at 1-800-238-LINK, visit our website at

Dedicated to Greg Speeter,
Founder of National Priorities Project
~an extraordinary visionary~
19432012

Key to A Peoples Guide to the Federal Budget

Throughout A Peoples Guide to the Federal Budget, look for the following symbols to guide you through each chapter:

Glossary additions: When you see words in bold, it means youve come across glossary terms. Look for a list of glossary additions at the end of each chapter and a complete glossary at the end of the book.

Did You Know: Check out these quirky facts about the federal budget.

Extra!: Look for these sidebars for more information on topics ranging from earmarks to the Buffett rule.

Learn to Fish: Youve heard the old saying, Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for life. A Peoples Guide to the Federal Budget teaches you to fish. Look for Learn to Fish sidebars that teach you what to look for when you see federal budget numbers, and how to separate substance from spin.

Takeaways: Look for takeaways to summarize key lessons from every chapter.

Federal Spending Categories

In this book, federal spending is divided into the following thirteen categories. These are not official categories designated by the federal government. Rather, they are developed by National Priorities Project and are intended to make the complex federal budget more comprehensible. Heres whats included in each category:

Education: Elementary, secondary, vocational, and higher education.

Energy & Environment: Energy supply, energy use, and natural resource conservation.

Food & Agriculture: Agriculture research, support to agriculture industries, and food assistance programs (including food stamps, WIC, the school lunch program, and others).

Government: Judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government, as well as the postal service.

Housing & Community: Housing assistance, community development, and disaster assistance and relief.

Interest on Debt: The interest payments the federal government makes on its accumulated debt minus interest income received by the government for assets it owns.

International Affairs: Diplomacy, and development and humanitarian activities overseas.

Medicare & Health: Medicare, Medicaid, Childrens Health Insurance Program, consumer and occupational health and safety, and other kinds of health services.

Military: The military, war costs, nuclear weapons, and other kinds of security programs.

Science: Scientific research including space programs.

Social Security, Unemployment & Labor: Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, job training, and federal employee retirement and disability programs.

Transportation: Air, water, and ground transportation.

Veterans Benefits: Health care, housing, education, and income benefits for veterans.

Foreword
by Barbara Ehrenreich

In 1998 I took a job as a waitress at a family restaurant in Key West, Florida, earning $2.43 an hour plus tips. That was the beginning of a journey. I took a series of low-wage jobs so that I could report on the challenges that people across this country face as they try to make ends meet on meager paychecks, and sometimes on no paycheck at all.

One of the prevailing lessons of Nickel and Dimed is that the experience of being a working person in America has a lot to do with decisions made in Washington about federal spending. National Priorities Project has responded with A Peoples Guide to the Federal Budget so that the budget isnt some obscure, impenetrable tome but rather something owned and shaped by all of us. Ideally, the federal budget should be an expression of our collective valuesincluding the values of people in middle-income as well as low-income communities, where residents typically have been disenfranchised from most kinds of civic engagement.

The people who appear in Nickel and Dimed couldnt always make ends meet on their paychecks, and sometimes they turned to safety-net programs for public assistance. I understand now that differences in federal programs have a pretty profound impact on individual lives. For example anyone who is eligible for the food stamp program and applies for assistance will receive food stamp benefits. As it turns out, thats because funding for that program is part of mandatory spending in the federal budget. Mandatory spending isnt a concept most people know much about, but its in this book. Mandatory spending automatically increases during weak economic times, as more people qualify for benefits from programs like food stamps, and then it shrinks when the economy strengthens and fewer people need public assistance.

I also learned that welfarethe program reformed in the 1990s and renamed Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)does not always make assistance available for eligible people who apply for benefits, because TANF is part of what is called discretionary spending in the federal budget. Thats another concept that isnt common lingo for most people, and one that this book covers in depth. The discretionary budget is determined every year at the discretion of federal lawmakers, and in this age of budget cutting, nonmilitary discretionary spending which pays for TANF and many other domestic programshas a bulls-eye on it for deep cuts, even though it comprises only around 12 percent of the total federal budget.