Introduction

Hello and welcome to my new blog where I take a look at the federal budget and try to make sense of it all. I started this blog for two purposes: first, because I found the topic fascinating and I thought others might too and secondly, I am hopeful (if not somewhat quixotically optimistic) that people who read this will be motivated to be more involved in the political process or at the very least to encourage people to research the topic for themselves and thus become a more informed as a voter. On that note, I would like to say that even though this is a political blog, it is my goal that it not be a platform for any one political philosophy or party. Simply put I do not have an agenda other then to be informative, encourage discussion and debate, and hopefully be interesting and maybe a little entertaining from time to time. As for my own political views I would describe them as follows: I do not believe there is a right or wrong political philosophy because the ideals of the "Right" and the "Left" both have merit and at the end of the day an uninformed Liberal voter is just as problematic for the country as an uninformed Conservative voter.

Yeah yeah, I know it’s a little preachy, but I stand by it all the same. So going back to the origins of this blog, the idea of came about because I write letters to elected officials from time to time to ask questions and express concerns. Believe it or not Congressional and Senatorial offices take mail very seriously when it comes to how they vote. If they get enough letters on the same topic they will be pressured to act on that topic (afterall, they want to get re-elected and they know that if you took the time to bother to write to them, odds are you will take the time to vote). Anyway I wanted to write a letter expressing some of my concerns about the growing national debt. In preparation I decided to do some research on the national debt so I would sound like I knew what I was talking about. So on my lunch breaks I stared reading up on the topic, and the more I read the more I realized I knew a lot less about than I realized. What started as a plan to read some Wikipedia articles one afternoon spiraled out of control and I ending up buried in spreadsheet from the Governmental Printing Office and the Treasury Department during my spare time for several weeks. What I found fascinated me and turned many of my perceptions on their heads.

Ultimately, I decided to take action. I will send that letter but first I wanted to get the word out. Many politicians and pundits often use the issue of the national debt and national deficit to push their agendas. Unfortunately, once you run the numbers of what is touted as common knowledge or common sense, it does not always pan out. I wanted to get people talking about what is real and not repeat the same tired slogans we have heard for years.

Like I said earlier, it is not my goal to support or discredit any specific political ideology or party. What I want to do is to distill my findings into a series of blog posts to help me get my own thoughts on paper and in the process hopefully encourage some of my fellow Americans to think about this issue themselves and draw their own conclusions and who knows maybe write a few letter of their own.

References and accuracy: I am going to be citing a lot of numbers in this blog. I did my very best to make sure that all of my information was accurate and from government sources. For your own reference all of my data (unless otherwise stated) were gathered at the following official government websites:

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/
http://www.ssa.gov/
http://www.publicdebt.ustreas.gov/
http://www.irs.gov/
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/
http://www.census.gov/
http://www.paymentaccuracy.gov/

Note: Just a little disclaimer that all of my research revolves around the 2010 budget because that year's budget has been finalized. I will not be referring to the 2011 budget for two reasons: first, it has not been posted at this time and second, even when it has been posted all it will show is how much money has been appropriated to be spent, not how much will actually be spent in 2011 (it could be more or it could be less in real life) Oh, and one more thing, thanks for reading I hope you enjoy following my blog.