[A Citizen's Guide to the Federal Budget]
[Front Matter]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office, www.gpo.gov]


 
                A CITIZEN'S GUIDE TO THE FEDERAL BUDGET 


Table of Contents 
A Note to the Reader ........................ iii 

1. What Is the Budget? .......................  1 

2. Where the Money Comes From--and Where It 
     Goes ....................................  3 
       Revenues ..............................  5 
       Spending ..............................  8 
       ``On'' and ``Off'' Budget ............. 10 
3. How Does the Government Create a Budget? .. 15 
     The President's Budget................... 15 
     Action in Congress ...................... 15 
     Monitoring the Budget ................... 17 
4. The Budget Surplus and Fiscal Discipline .. 19 
     Why a Budget Surplus is Important ....... 22 
     Surplus and Debt......................... 23 
5. The President's 2002 Budget................ 25 
     Thematic Highlights of President Bush's 
       2002 Budget ........................... 25 
     The President's Policy Priorities ....... 26 
     Additional Budget Highlights ............ 29 
Glossary ..................................... 31 

List of Charts and Tables .................... 35 

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               Details in this document may not add to 
                        totals due to rounding. 
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[[Page iii]]
A Note to the Reader 
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Next year, your Federal Government will spend nearly $2.0 trillion. 
Needless to say, that's a lot of money. In fact, that's almost $7,000 
for every man, woman, and child in the country; nearly $5.4 billion per 
day; and about $3.7 million per minute. And most of that money comes 
from taxes on the American people. 
The Government spends it on lots of things--on programs as large as 
Social Security, and on activities as small and unknown as repairs to 
the National Zoo. Together, these programs are what make up the Federal 
budget. 
How much do you know about the budget? If your answer is ``not much,'' 
you're not alone. In fact, hardly anybody knows everything that's in the 
thousands of pages, and several books, that make up the budget each year. 
But we know you care a lot about how the Government spends your money. 
That's why A Citizen's Guide to the Federal Budget was created. With this 
seventh edition, we hope to make the budget more accessible and understandable. 
The Guide is designed to give you a walking tour of the budget. In these 
pages, we will outline for you how the Government raises revenues and 
spends money, how the President and Congress enact the budget, how the 
Nation has been able to move from deficit to surplus, and what the 
President hopes to accomplish with his 2002 Budget. 
After you read these pages, we hope that you will think the tour was worth 
your time. 
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This Citizen's Guide and other more detailed and technical 2002 
Budget documents are available on the Internet. To access 
documents through the World Wide Web, use the following address: 
             http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget
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