Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Infographic of the Week: Where Does the Federal Government Spend Our Money?
Infographic of the Week: Where Does the Federal Government Spend Our Money?
Dec 3, 2025 11:50 AM

Every year some pollster asks Americans what percentageof the federal budget goes to foreign aid. And every year Americans make a guess that is wildly off the mark. The average answer we give is 26 percent; only 1 out of 20 of us correctly guess that it’s less than 1 percent.

Part of the reason we are wrong is that we’re just really bad at guesstimation. But another reason is that we rarely take the time to find out what is actually in the federal budget.

Fortunately, the Office of Management and Budget has something that can make that process easier. Using their interactive graphic you can explore where your tax dollars go and see what portion of the Federal budget is dedicated to different program areas under President Obama’s proposed budget for 2016.

Even just a glance at the proposed budget will show you that former undersecretary of the Treasury Peter Fisher was right when he described the U.S. government as “an pany with an army.”

Note: This is just a static image. Click here to find the interactive graphic.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Is Capitalism Really A Dangerous Idea?
Over at MercatorNet, there is a discussion taking place on the “world’s most dangerous idea.” Entries include the idea that human beings are no more dignified than animals, that the cheap, abundant information found on the Internet is a good thing, and that the holding of dogmas is only for the narrow-minded. But the one “dangerous idea” most interesting to PowerBlog readers may that “capitalism is the most ethical form economics.” This last es from Prof. Jeffrey Langan, chairman of...
The Superiority of Christian Hospitals
Thomson Reuters has issued a new report that shows church-run hospitals provide better quality care more efficiently than other secular hospitals. Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters, says, “Our data suggest that the leadership of health systems owned by churches may be the most active in aligning quality goals and monitoring achievement of mission across the system.” It is certainly true that Christian engagement of issues surrounding health care are...
Audio: Subsidiarity Over Social Justice
In an mentary produced for Ave Maria Radio and Catholic Exchange, Paul Kengor says it is “incumbent among Catholics to learn more about this blessed concept of subsidiarity.” As part of this education, he mends “The Principle of Subsidiarity” by David A. Bosnich in Acton’s Religion & Liberty quarterly. Here’s some of what Kengor, a professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, had to say: I’m convinced, from study...
Abela: Will Teaching Business Ethics Make Business More Ethical?
On the National Catholic Register, Andrew Abela confesses to a “nagging suspicion that teaching business ethics in a university is not delivering on what is expected of it.” The question is both concrete and academic: Abela is the chairman of the Department of Business and Economics at The Catholic University of America and an associate professor of marketing. He was awarded the Acton Institute’s Novak Award in 2009. Here, he explains the problem with “amoral” business attitudes: … we often...
Carbon Regulation: Ecological Utopia or Economic Nightmare?
In this week’s Acton Commentary, I discuss whether the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned regulation of carbon emissions can be justified from a Christian perspective. The EPA has found that carbon emissions endanger “public health and welfare,” and it is on track to begin regulating vehicle and power plant emissions. Environmentalists claim that policies targeting carbon emissions, such as EPA regulation or a cap-and-trade program, will stimulate the economy by creating green jobs. Unfortunately, this is not the case – the...
Rev. Sirico: The Cultural and Moral Failures that Precipitated the Crash
The Italian online daily Ilsussidiario.net recently turned to Rev. Robert A. Sirico with a a couple of key questions about the financial crisis: “So what went wrong with our culture that turned up so badly in our markets? Or were the cause and effect reversed: something went wrong in our markets that turned up badly in our culture?” Here’s part of the exchange: Have moral or cultural causes contributed to the financial crisis? If so, what are they? One could...
Audio: Rev. Sirico on ‘The Principle of Subsidiarity and the Service to the Poor’
On the new Reclaiming the Culture radio show, host Dolores Meehan recently interviewed Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico on the subject of “The Principle of Subsidiarity and the Service to the Poor.” Here’s how Meehan describes the show’s mission: Bay Area Catholics are some of the strongest Catholics in the country. Reclaiming the Culture grew out of the desire to show that the Catholic Church in the Bay Area has the resources to confront the prevailing secular culture. Our...
The Economist, Catholicism, and Europe
When es to the sophistication of its coverage of religious affairs, the Economist is better than most other British publications (admittedly not a high standard) which generally insist on trying to read religion through an ideologically-secularist lens. Normally the Economist tries to present religion as a slightly plex matter than “stick-in-the-mud-conservatives”-versus-“open-minded-enlightened-progressivists”, though it usually slips in one of the usual secularist bromides, as if to reassure its audiences that it’s keeping a critical distance. A good example of this is...
Rev. Sirico: Free markets, not aid, will help poor nations best
The Detroit News published a new column today by Acton president and co-founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico: Faith and Policy: Free markets, not aid, will help poor nations best Rev. Robert Sirico At the recent G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto, a hue and cry was raised by nongovernmental organizations and other activists about the failure of industrialized countries to make good on promises to raise aid to the developing world. Instead, the activists should have called for a summit...
Do We Need Pro-Family Tax Policies?
Last month, in “Europe’s Choice: Populate or Perish,” Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg observed: At a deeper level … Europe’s declining birth-rate may also reflect a change in intellectual horizons. A cultural outlook focused upon the present and disinterested in the future is more likely to view children as a burden rather than a gift to be cared for in quite un-self-interested ways. Individuals and societies that have lost a sense of connection to their past and have no particular...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved