White House Proposes FY 2011 Budget

I've been studying the proposed FY 2011 budget released by the White House today. I created this pie chart to show where the money is going.

The three things I like least about the budget are: 1) there is no projection into the future where the budget ever gets balanced; and 2) security spending is still about 13% of federal spending, which is about twice as high as it needs to be; and 3) meaningful foreign aid to reduce poverty remains a trivial part of the budget.

The things I like about this budget are: 1) it increases spending on education, including a provision for a large increase in Federal Pell Grants; and 2) The National Institutes of Health will get a slight increase (in FY 2010 there is a proposed budget for $31.1 billion, and in FY 2011 the NIH get $32.1 billion). I like the optimism in the projection that unemployment benefits paid out to those getting unemployment insurance will be only $158 billion in FY 2010 and then drop way down to $100 billion in FY 2011. I hope we really do experience that. I wonder about this optimistic picture, because with mandatory outlays for the Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service the FY 2010 projection is $78.4 billion and the FY 2011 projection is $82.4 billion.