Welcome to the Annual Report of the United States of America, dedicated to explaining and analyzing the federal budget and proposing sustainable fiscal solutions. Please take time to learn about the challenges facing U.S. spending policy and engage your fellow citizens to enact real, sustainable reform.
Read the editors' letterAlexander Chen
This year, Americans watched as the national debt rose to $14.7 trillion, nearly matching the GDP. After three years of recession, the U.S. failed to rein in federal spending and agree on a sustainable budget. We break down the current state of the federal budget.
Web design by Preston So
Debt and Interest If financial institutions are taken in absolute values, the United States’s debt has nearly overtaken the nation’s annual GDP. In fact, the cumulative total of the federal government’s outstanding debt, at $14.294 trillion, is equal to the GDP of just about the next three largest economies, combined. On a smaller scale, the government owes $46,389 per American ... Read More
Meet Sam. He’s pretty young, as far as these things go, a good guy, fairly well-liked by his peers, and very, very rich. But he’s made some questionable decisions lately, and money problems are very much on his mind: he’s been borrowing profusely to finance a nasty spending habit, and most of his financial commitments—taking care of his parents and ... Read More
Hidden beneath the public face of the government—the President, Congress, and the Courts—extends the vast iceberg of federal government. Regulatory agencies, bureaucracies and other organizations like the FBI provide millions of jobs and spend billions of dollars, impacting everything from agriculture to commerce to recreation. Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has described the current state of America as “overweening, huge, ... Read More
If the debt ceiling debate did nothing else, it plainly demonstrated Washington’s unhealthy tendency to punt tough fiscal decisions down the line. It was remarkable then, when on April 5, 2011, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, released a long-term budget with a serious and potentially unpopular plan to reduce the deficit and pay off ... Read More
Ten years ago, the nation’s future fiscal health seemed assured: an economic boom and the lack of significant external threats created budget surpluses. In 2001 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) even projected that over the next decade the nation would enjoy a $5.6 trillion surplus. Politicians gleefully debated how to best utilize the windfall, ultimately spending the expected surplus on ... Read More
Here’s a quick quiz for you: What percentage of the fiscal year 2010 United States federal budget was spent on foreign aid? Remember, expenditures in the 2010 U.S. federal budget totaled a whopping $3.456 trillion. Also remember that foreign aid encapsulates a wide range of activities and programs: counter-terrorism, development, reconstruction, humanitarian assistance, global health, education, and much more. So ... Read More
If you ever find yourself in D.C. and want to see something other than the Washington Monument, take a break from D.C.’s swampy summer mornings and its muggy tourism to sit in on a session of drug court. “Smart on crime is tough on crime,” read posters scattered around Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building. A few blocks north ... Read More
The United States government is in the midst of a budget crisis. The federal government has run a deficit—it has spent more than it collected in tax revenues—in all but four fiscal years since 1969, but recent deficits have reached unsustainable levels. In 2009, the government spent $1.4 trillion more than it raised, the largest nominal deficit in history and ... Read More
The U.S. federal government is by far the largest single entity in the world. As of fiscal year 2009, its expenditures of $3.6 trillion exceeded those of the second and third biggest governments combined. This largely reflects the size of the American economy, itself the largest on the planet. Federal spending has grown by about 5 percent over the past ... Read More
Receipts Personal Income Tax Since the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, the personal income tax has provided the federal government’s single largest source of revenue. The tax consists of six brackets, levying progressively higher rates on higher levels of income. For example, a taxpayer earning $5,000 of taxable income per year would pay only 10%, or $500, of ... Read More
The low number of welfare recipients may indicate substantial need for reform
