Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

WASHINGTON, MAY 12, 2009--Would President Obama's budget plan increase deficit spending much more than other modern presidents? How much and how fast would the national debt go up under Obama's budget? Is it true that amid all the government spending, the defense budget would fall to what it was before the 9/11 attacks?

Taxpayers will find clear answers to these questions about the new administration, along with other tax and budget trends important to ordinary Americans, in the 2009 Federal Revenue and Spending Book of Charts. An updated and expanded edition of the popular online resource from The Heritage Foundation, it includes 37 easy-to-follow information graphics.

New features include an interactive "flash" graphic that dramatically shows that the more Americans earn, the higher their portion of total federal taxes. Click on the image, for instance, to see that the top 10 percent of earners pay 71 percent of the taxes. The bottom 50 percent pay 3 percent.

Visitors to heritage.org/BudgetChartBook, the custom Web site for the Book of Charts, may download, post or e-mail any of the charts and graphs, as well as click on links to related Heritage research and analysis. Visitors can quickly bookmark, embed and share the data they want through Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and other applications.

"More than ever, interested taxpayers -- as well as journalists and members of Congress -- will find the Book of Charts the go-to site for details on federal spending and taxes, whether past, present or projected," says Nicola Moore, assistant director of Heritage's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies.

Also new are charts that show:

• Tax rates must be doubled if Congress doesn't reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
• Massive bailouts pale next to trillions of dollars promised, but not funded, under those "Big Three" entitlements.
• "Stimulus" spending by Obama and Congress fattened an already bloated federal budget.

Heritage researchers, analysts and graphic artists annually prepare, revise and update the spending and revenue charts.

Some of this year's charts provide answers to the questionsraised above:

Under the Obama plan, deficit spending would spurt to seven times what it was under President Kennedy over 45 years ago, far outpacing any other president since.

Publicly held national debt would more than double in 10 years, to 82.4 percent of economic output (GDP), by far the highest level since World War II.

Defense spending under the Obama budget, though, would fall from 4.7 percent of GDP to the pre-9/11 level of 3 percent.

With the Obama administration and a new Congress in control of the purse strings, the 2009 Federal Revenue and Spending Book of Charts is ready to be mined by news reporters, commentators, congressional staff, students of public policy, netroots activists--anyone concerned or curious about the government's worsening borrow-and-spend addiction.