U.S. Federal Budget questions.

[Dinner]

I'm looking for a nice pie chart which shows the breakdown of the US Federal budget for last year. Anyone know where I can find one? So far google hasn't been much help and the government websites seemed designed more to hide information rather then make it easier for people to find what they're looking for.

The reason for this is I'm trying to prove one of my neighbors wrong. He's a die hard rightist and Rush Limbaugh listener who recently claimed that the US only spends 5%-10% of the budget on the military but spends 20% on foreign aid. Of course this is utterly and completely false and I'd like one simple pie chart (the fellow is an idiot so anything which isn't simple will go over his head) so even he can understand it.

Anyone help me out?

[Thorn]

Here is my pie chart in text format:

Military:99.9% of budget
Social Programs: 0.09%
Education: 0.009%

[Dinner]

I found this but it doesn't break out foreign aid. I'm sure foreign aid is less then 1% of the budget (likely around .5%) but if it isn't spelled out then duffus will try to weazel. I'd also like to find a 2005 budget breakdown so he can't claim the information is out of date.

[Kuciwalker]

http://images.google.com/images?q=federal+budget

First result.

[Colonâ„¢]

Haven't checked CBO? http://www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf Table 7 and 8.

[Whoha]

Re: U.S. Federal Budget questions.

Originally posted by Oerdin
I'm looking for a nice pie chart which shows the breakdown of the US Federal budget for last year. Anyone know where I can find one? So far google hasn't been much help and the government websites seemed designed more to hide information rather then make it easier for people to find what they're looking for.

The reason for this is I'm trying to prove one of my neighbors wrong. He's a die hard rightist and Rush Limbaugh listener who recently claimed that the US only spends 5%-10% of the budget on the military but spends 20% on foreign aid. Of course this is utterly and completely false and I'd like one simple pie chart (the fellow is an idiot so anything which isn't simple will go over his head) so even he can understand it.

Anyone help me out?

hes wrong about the foreign aid private citizens donate more then our government spends, and the budget was about 3 trillion, military spending about 500 billion so 17%. hes using older figures about how much we spend and not taking into account the two wars we're in now.

the point hes probably trying to make is that we do spend a lot on foreign aid in terms of the actual number.

[Dinner]

We were talking about the Federal budget deficit and he claimed that simply eliminating foreign aid would balance the budget. I laughed and said we'd have to cut both the military and social programs as well as eliminating Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. I said foreign aid was less then 1% of the total budget and defense was around 20% to which he replied that Defense was 5%-10% while foreign aid was 20%.

I don't know where people get some of these silly ideas.