Description
Week 2 Assignment: Federal Budget Activity
This week we learned about how laws get made by the legislative branch of our government. One of the biggest laws that regularly gets made by Congress is the Federal Budget.. The Federal Budget is a law that spells out how the government will spend its money. This is a huge power that Congress has that is often called, “The Power of the Purse.” If the Congress doesn’t give the government money to do something in the Budget, the government won’t have the resources do what it might want to do.
Part 1 - Create Your Budget
To create your budget, you must use the website: http://crfb.org/stabilizethedebt/
Once you are at http://crfb.org/stabilizethedebt/ and ready to begin click the “next” button.
Begin to make your budget selections by selecting various check boxes. Click the “i” icon next to each line item if you want more information about any particular budget line item.
Once you have sufficiently addressed each of the specific budget line items and arrived at the tab labeled “results,” right click the link labeled: “Save PDF,” download the file, and submit this final PDF file along with your text for the following essay.
*Do not forget to also submit your essay. You can upload multiple files in a single assignment submission. If you need help with this please contact your student advisor or instructor.
**It is strongly recommended that you use the Chrome or Firefox web browserfor this activity. If you are having trouble getting your final results todisplay or are having difficulty exporting your final results as a PDFfile, please try the following steps:
(1) Use the Chrome or Firefox web browser.
(2) Take and upload screen shots of your budget selections to blackboardalong with your essay for this assignment.
(3) Contact your instructor to make alternative arrangements.
Part 2 - Federal Budget Activity Reflection Essay
In at least 500 words answer the following questions:
- Provide a justification of the budget choices you made within one of the following categories: Defense, Domestic, Social Security, Healthcare (you may NOT choose to focus on the categories labeled: “Budget Path,” “Other,” “Revenue,” or “Tax Expenditures”). In this defense you must address possible counter arguments to the budget decisions you made. If you are spending more under this category how are you going to get new revenue or gain public support for more deficit spending? If you are cutting funds – what are you going to do with these surplus funds?
- Discuss how this assignment impacted your understanding of the budget process, and the debates between the parties and within Congress have regarding the federal budget? Do you think anything should be done to streamline the current budget process?
- Discuss how difficult this would have been to do this activity as a group project – what budget issues would have been contentious? How could you have come to a compromise?
*Don’t forget to upload your pdf file of the budget as well as the text of your essay in your assignment submission.
Please note: APA formatting and citations rules apply to this and all essays in this course.
As with all weekly written assignments, submit your work as an attached file. Double-space your paper and use 12 point Times New Roman as your font.
Explanation & Answer
here you go buddy,
USA federal budget
1
FEDERAL BUDGET
It is universally acknowledged that the United States National defense gets the lion’s
share of the nation’s discretional spending. A staggering $618.2 billion is set aside just for it.
The usage of this money includes maintaining armed forces, development and utilization of
weapons, operation and maintenance of military facilities, health and life insurance of
military personnel, research and development of new technologies among others. This sum of
money though labelled to be for the National Defence, it caters for not just the United States
but more than a dozen other countries. The surprising thing, however, is that the United
States has focused so much on giving foreign aid that the very citizens are neglected and
other sectors like education, not well-taken care of.
My stand, therefore is that this amount of money allocated for defense should be
reduced by $150 dollars and this will be achieved by cutting international assistance
programs by 25%.Of course, someone may counter this by claiming that the United States is
a diplomatic country, therefore, cannot cut the expenditure on foreign aid. However, if you
look are in the United States and look around you will notice that we need foreign aid instead.
If the foreign aid is cut not even by 40% but just 25%, the $150 billion dollars that would
remain would give the United States a whole new face. How? The education sector needs
facilities for research, structures like labs, libraries, classroom. Thousands of bright but poor
students would be given scholarships, loans, and stipends. The money could be fuelled into
the health sector which for now is on its deathbed because of lack of research, less medical
equipment and medical personnel. Finally, the money could also be directed towards
enhancing transport. Currently, air and water transport nee...