[las3rjock]

1. The Department of Energy appears in at least three places in the chart: once under "National defense", once under "General science", and once under "Energy". I assume the amount under national defense consists of the allocations for nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship and nuclear reactor production for the U.S. military.

I will agree that it is strange that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been categorized as "National defense"; the rest of the Department of Justice seems to have been catergorized as "Administration".

2. One could categorize Medicare with Health, but one can already do that with the chart as shown by considering those two rectangles together. It is interesting to see that Medicare, by itself, has a larger allocation than everything else in the Department of Health and Human Services (and there are pieces in the Health rectangle that probably belong in the Medicare rectangle, e.g. "Grants to states for Medicaid" and "DoD Medicare-eligible retiree health care fund").

3. The Department of Veterans Affairs is a Cabinet-level department independent from the Department of Defense.

4. It looks like the Department of Justice and the Department of Treasury have been lumped together under "Administration".

I will agree that some aspects of this breakdown are strange, but I don't think it defeats the purpose of this chart.

[dantheman]

Excellent feedback, I didn't know that VA wasn't DOD.

Is the chart only about the executive branch? Does it include congressional spending & the federal judiciary?

[las3rjock]

I believe that the budget proposal on which this chart is based is only for the executive branch.