In case you didn’t recognize my stretched attempt at a reference to the game Battleship in the title of this post… well that’s what it was. (Find an online version of the game embedded at the bottom of the post.)
While working on a totally unrelated task, I came across a spectacular visualization tool representing the US federal budget. (Aren’t the most interesting finds on the Net stumbled upon? And I don’t mean using the official toolbar.)
Now that this post is half parenthetical, I promise I’ll write one whole sentence without any asides.
(Done. Go me!)
The visualization is in the form of a wall-hanging poster available at WallStats.com. The data represented is the breakdown of the 2009 federal budget as proposed by the White House. You can also see in the background the relative size of the federal deficit (>$10 trillion).
This poster caught my attention as it takes something exceedingly complex (5,000 pages of budget documentation) and condenses it into one large, summary graphic.
What’s that old cliche… A picture is worth 5,000 pages?
It’s intuitive, too. The size of the circle is proportional to the amount of money. There is a clear hierarchy of spending from the top level downwards.
As hard as the goverment is working to spend our money, don’t you think they could come up with stuff like this on their own? After all, the federal budget is just the tip of the iceberg as far as complex, poorly-communicated goverment activity is concerned.
Maybe they wanted to budget for a Federal Activity Communication & Explanation Department, but the circle representing the department’s budget was just too small to show up on the poster…
Now, to explain the title of this post, here are the budgets for several different departments for comparison:
Department of Defense: $515 billion
Defense and national security overall: ~$800 billion
Deparment of Energy: $25 billion (Defense-related: $16 billion; Energy efficiency and renewables: ~$1 billion)
Department of Education: $59 billion
If you were listening to the same Presidential election debate I watched tonight, you heard a lot of talk about the importance of energy security and renewable energy to “break our addiction to foreign oil.” But our we investing enough in our future energy needs? Energy efficiency and renewable energy spending is 0.16% of the defense budget.
You also heard often how the American people and their innovation skills are the country’s greatest strength and will keep us strong, safe, and healthy into the future. But are we investing enough in our children’s futures via their education? Our Dept. of Education budget is 7.4% of the defense budget.
Look at the poster. The Department of Defense battleship is so large that it could wipe the Education and Energy dingies right off the budget map.
C’mon, future leader of the USA.
Put our money where our mouths are.
Now, for something a little more light-hearted: Play some Battleship and flash back to your days of imperial naval domination as a 7-year-old!
