Reducung Federal Government Spending is Just Talk

On his morning radio show, Neal Boortz recently related federal government finances to that of those of the average US family. He did this by eliminating eight zeros from the federal budget numbers and came up with the following numbers. I don't recall Neal's exact numbers, but these are in the ballpark. Average family income was $21,000. Average family annual expenses were $38,000 (note the annual budget deficit of $17,000). Credit card debt was $270,000. With this kind of activity, what could this family due to eventually become solvent? Perhaps a more important question is how long will the credit card company continued\ to advance $17,000 per year in additional debt, when there seems to be no possibility of ever recovering the $250,000?

There has been continuing talk on how to reduce the federal budget and start to pay off the horrendous national debt. The only problem is that it is just talk and nothing is being accomplished.

There are 16 Federal Departments under control of the President, although Congress is responsible for funding. Some of the better-known departments are Department of Energy, Department of education, Department of Defense, and Department of Health and Human Services. Each of these departments has a number of agencies. For example, the National Institutes of Health fall under the Department of Health and Human Services. The Environmental Protection Agency is an independent agency, not associated with any Department.


The Congress recently passed an omnibus appropriations bill for nine agencies. This was on top of an appropriations passed in November. It is difficult to obtain a complete picture from the Internet on the individual appropriations, but a few of them are:
DOEn $25.7 billion
NIH $30.7 billion
EPA $8.4 billion
DOD $72.4 billion
DOEd $39.9 billion

These few Departments and Agencies are only a sprinkling of the 16 Departments and agencies running into 100. Yet, the total appropriation for those few is $536 billion. Using the Boortz technique of knocking off eight zeros to reduce it to family budget analogy, the expenditure is $5360 per year in the family budget. This is obviously a considerable expenditure for a family of $21,000 average income and spending $38,000. If we knocked out this $5360, we could make a significant dent in the family budget deficit. The same could apply to the federal government deficit. Perhaps more significantly, it should be noted that the $536 billion appropriation is approximately the same as it was last year, which means no progress was made to reduce federal expenditures.