Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

WASHINGTON, MARCH 14, 2007—Want to see how much the typical household will pay in taxes in the years ahead?  Did you realize corporate income taxes doubled in four years? Or that, even with a war on, we spend less on defense than in the 1970s and '80s?

These and other budget and tax trends affecting ordinary Americans are tracked in the updated "Federal Revenue and Spending: A Book of Charts," an invaluable online resource from The Heritage Foundation.

Simply go to heritage.org/research/features/budgetchartbook/index.cfm  to view 36 upgraded charts and graphs, prepared by researchers at Heritage’s Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and the Washington think tank’s Center for Data Analysis.

"Users can trust this as a go-to resource for just about any detail on current, historical and projected spending and taxes,” says Alison Acosta Fraser, director of the Roe Institute. “They can quickly and clearly see the urgent need for budget and spending reform."

The Book of Charts is a mother lode of information for reporters, commentators, members of Congress and their staffs, students of public policy, netroots activists—anyone concerned about the mounting fiscal crisis and how it evolved over more than 40 years.

Among new features are sobering charts showing how:

• The tax burden will reach new highs even if tax cuts now set to expire are extended.
• Defense spending droops below the historical average, despite the War on Terror.
• Congress larded on an astonishing 34,616 pork projects over just three years—until slashing “earmarks” by 73 percent in the face of taxpayers’ ire.

With more than 280,000 active members and donors, The Heritage Foundation is the most broadly supported public policy research institute in the country. The 34-year-old institution has a staff of nearly 200 and an annual budget of $46 million.