Yesterday, US President Obama signed a $680bn military policy bill, which cuts military spending, including $2bn in funding for new F-22 fighter jets. However, the bill also contained the first major piece of federal gay rights legislation, and fulfilled an Obama campaign promise: acts of violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people have now been added to the list of federal hate crimes.
posted by zarq on Oct 29, 2009 - 219 comments

Overly confident in the economic health of the United States? Feeling sanguine about current spending levels? Haven't yet been scared out of your wits about your financial future? No worries! The U.S. National Debt Clock page is for you! Your one stop shop for all things financial meltdown related: Total debt, debt per citizen, budget deficits and spending year-to-date, total governmental bailouts, and much much more!
posted by Justinian on Jun 26, 2009 - 77 comments

President Obama's plan for American Recovery and Reinvestment [pdf] might be thought of as TARP round two [1,2] -- instead of hiding the bodies, this one's preparing the ground for a big tent or the economic equivalent of war. There are critics and detractors (cramdown nation ;) left and right, natch, but also conservative supporters and progressive defenders to save or create three four million jobs; hooray! [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jan 11, 2009 - 51 comments

The Next New Deal With the vaunted post-Cold War "Peace dividend" evaporating, the United States found itself unable to invest adequately in either its infrastructure or its children. Eventually people began to talk of another Great Depression, before the coming of the next New Deal.
posted by Kwantsar on Oct 1, 2008 - 8 comments

Want to know how government spending and taxation levels have gone up or down over the last 20 years, and how they compare with other countries? The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has a handy set of tables (Excel, HTML-ized by Google): total spending, total revenues, fiscal surplus or deficit (Norway's surplus is 17% of GDP). Part of the statistical tables for the semi-annual OECD Outlook.
posted by russilwvong on May 30, 2008 - 6 comments

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush. "The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup." [Via Firedoglake.]
posted by homunculus on Nov 18, 2007 - 70 comments

"Of 10 governments worldwide implicated in the recruitment or use of children as soldiers, nine receive US military assistance."
posted by chunking express on Apr 27, 2007 - 24 comments

How the US Federal Government spends our money. How the US Representatives spend their money.
posted by shoepal on Oct 10, 2006 - 18 comments

Invest in immigrants!!! Business is booming!!!
posted by pwedza on Jul 22, 2006 - 15 comments

William Proxmire dead at 90. The senator from Wisconsin was famous for the Golden Fleece Award
posted by fixedgear on Dec 15, 2005 - 21 comments

Donald Rumsfeld recently aimed critisicm at China's military spending. “Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?” A question he may well ask of himself. According to a report recently released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (in our fair city) Global Military Spending topped $1Trillion in 2004. The United States accounted for 47 percent of all military expenditures, while Britain and France each made up 5 percent of the total. In all, 15 countries accounted for 82 percent of the world's total military spending. The BBC reported last month that Chinese military spending increased by 12% in 2004 to $25Bn - or one twentieth of what the US spends.
posted by three blind mice on Jun 7, 2005 - 45 comments

Death and Taxes: A Visual Look at Where Your (U.S.) Tax Dollars Go
posted by Space Coyote on Jan 3, 2005 - 37 comments

Federal Business Opportunities

Ever wanted to know where all your tax dollars really go? Mosey on over to FedBizOpps.gov and search the nice little database they've got there for all those federal business opportunities you just can't wait to bid on....How about making a wearable computer for the Navy? Want to perform for the USO? How about getting paid to surf the intarwebs to defeat the terrorists? The Special Operations Command has the job for you! Looking to unload 30 million tons of beef? You've got a buyer! Gather wild horses for the Dept of Ag! Haul carcasses in the search for mad cow disease! Oh, and by the way, the Iraqi Army needs some clarinets...
posted by piedrasyluz on Nov 24, 2004 - 5 comments

Where is our money going? According to the Congressional Budget Office, not only is the Bush administration asking for 87 billion dollars to cover Iraqi reconstruction, but they're also unable to account for 2.5 billion of the 4 billion dollars that they're spending per month in Iraq.
posted by bshort on Sep 18, 2003 - 34 comments

Krugman on Iraq "The direct military cost of the occupation is $4 billion a month, and there's no end in sight. But that's only part of the bill. This week Paul Bremer suddenly admitted that Iraq would need "several tens of billions" in aid next year. That remark was probably aimed not at the public but at his masters in Washington; he apparently needed to get their attention."
posted by skallas on Aug 30, 2003 - 41 comments

Political Fratricide: The GOP is reportedly [+] proposing $15 billion of cuts — or is it $25? — in veterans' benefits between now and 2007, and groups like the Veterans Against the Iraq War are hopping mad. Hell, I imagine the pro-war wing is pretty peeved, too. It's part of a plan with delusions of grandeur to deliver massive tax cuts AND kill the deficit ... you know, the one that did not exist before W was elected, as I understand it ... in six years. The original tip is from Stand Down. The actual status of the cuts is nebulous at this point, however, with the SF Chron reporting that they will likely fail in the Senate as the tax cut is halved and others reporting that the die is not yet cast. The House budget resolution, for metafilter accountants who like these things, is here.
posted by hairyeyeball on Apr 1, 2003 - 12 comments

The US Department of Education - Or Not?
A link or two for those who don't own a television. Or a Michael Jackson CD.
Reaction to federal initiatives like No Child Left Behind (which is directed purely at education, and has been discussed here before ) and Head Start (which has a social component, and has not (I think)) is starting to filter in.
Should the Federal Government worry about disparities in educational expenditures? Should it worry about how services are delivered?
posted by 314/ on Feb 7, 2003 - 4 comments

An imaginative solution to California's school budget crisis.
posted by semmi on Jan 24, 2003 - 24 comments

"Hang in there, help is on the way."

The director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., recently asked the Defense Department to lower the 2004 pay raise from its expected 3.7 percent to 2 percent. Daniels also wants future raises tied to inflation, rather than basing boosts on what civilians doing comparable jobs in the private sector might make.

Many of our military families already qualify for welfare and food stamps. Pay raises are out of the question when there's NMD and tax cuts to the wealthy needing funding.
posted by nofundy on Dec 23, 2002 - 7 comments

Welcome to the State Department... I mean, the Republican Party. "For some time, travelers browsing the State Department Web site for helpful tips about Guadalajara, Mexico, found much more than they bargained for when they clicked on a photograph of President Bush. The click transported them to a partisan playground, where they were told how to get involved with the Republican Party and even how to donate money to it." (Why does nytimes.com have all the good stories?- metafilter, metafilter)
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy on Sep 13, 2002 - 11 comments

"All this costs money. It costs more than we have." One year ago today, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned of a "subtle and implacable" adversary whose "brutal consistency...stifles free thought...and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk." It wasn't freedom's obvious foes; he was referring to waste in the Pentagon. The DOD uses so many different financial systems and interfaces it won't have auditable books for another five to 10 years. It still manually enters purchases made with electronic purchase cards. It fires whistleblowers who call attention to shady missile defense deals. And every year, it completely loses track of a quarter of the world's biggest military budget.
posted by mediareport on Sep 10, 2002 - 7 comments

Earlier this week, Bush blocked $5.1 billion in emergency spending, which most visibly included denying a couple hundred million earmarked for firefighters and emergency services. While he claims the block was to curtail wasteful spending, the biggest waste that keeps getting quoted is the new insect collections room at the smithsonian, even though his office specifically requested the money for his budget request for fiscal 2003. If the only example of wasteful spending was something he requested previously, what was the point of blocking the funds? [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Aug 16, 2002 - 18 comments

The U.S. Army pays for lapdances. "In addition to the inappropriate purchases, the GAO said more than 1,200 Army employees wrote bad checks to pay their government credit card bills. Last year alone, that cost taxpayers $3.8 million in higher fees and lost rebates." You mean, the government practices bad accounting? Ron Paul points out that the Congress commits the worst accounting fraud of all. But the most important issue of all is, with the government paying for Strip Club tips, gambling, and wine, does this mean that God will no longer bless America?
posted by insomnyuk on Jul 18, 2002 - 18 comments

You're the king of a small african nation. You have an annual health budget of $15 million. Two-thirds of the people in your nation are HIV positive, and two-thirds are living below the poverty line. What do you do? Why, you buy a $31 million private jet, of course!
posted by Reggie452 on Jul 8, 2002 - 27 comments

Jaw-drop-inducing link of the day The federal government spent $62 million on a building to store and treat low-level radioactive waste at a California nuclear weapons laboratory, then decided the structure wasn't secure enough. So where is the waste kept now?

... Right outside the new building, under tents.

posted by magullo on Jun 10, 2002 - 11 comments

Elmo appears before Congress. The puppet testifies before the Education Appropriations Subcommittee to urge more spending on musical instruments.
posted by swift on Apr 24, 2002 - 19 comments

The Red Cross has a decade-long pattern of using local crises to raise funds, and then to spend those funds on other things. The donors had thought their money would go to help specific victims, and sometimes up to 80% would be diverted to other causes. I think this is wrong.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Nov 19, 2001 - 39 comments

"The sky won't fall, it will probably just trickle down." On whom? (Guess who.) Out here in Washington State voters just approved another in a series of initiatives that, collectively, choke off the state government's primary funding sources. What else are the results of the initiative process around the country? And are The People responsible enough to be trusted with it?
posted by argybarg on Nov 8, 2001 - 30 comments

Costly habits. Are you broke again? Don't know where your money is going? Take a look at what you're spending your money on. Chances are, if you're supporting bad habits such as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or using marijuana or other illicit substances, you're spending quite a chunk of change. If you don't believe it, try out this expense calculator and see how much money you could be spending on something else!
posted by twistedonion on Oct 9, 2001 - 26 comments

Percent of World Military Spending. The US and its allies dwarf the rest of the world in what it spends on defense. On the one hand I see the need to bring overwhelming force in a conflict and I think just having it is in itself stabilizing. But I can also see money and resources put to better use elsewhere (e.g. healthcare, education, basic research) the effects of which I think might even do more to affect global peace and prosperity than any loss that may obtain from a reduced defense budget. (other Thoughts of the Fortnight by J. Bradford DeLong including this draft he presented with Larry Summers! at the Fed symposium in Jackson Hole :)
posted by kliuless on Sep 1, 2001 - 36 comments

Pentagon fraud $9,000,000,000. I hope this is a misprint. More inside.
posted by rdr on Jul 27, 2001 - 35 comments

"Big government is good for you, and we'll spare no expense making sure you know it!" New figures show the largest advertiser in the UK is now the British government, with the government blowing about 2 1/2 times as much on ads per year as it did before before Labour's rise to power. This is far more than than any other country's government spends. Dissemination of truly important information, or taxpayer-funded plugs for Labour?
posted by aaron on Apr 17, 2001 - 16 comments