If you are curious about the federal budget, there are places you can go to find out what it is. This is not that place.

If you want to know what the differences are between mandatory spending and discretionary spending, I suggest the Brookings Institute.

If you want to see how your money is spent, you can go to the National Priorities Project, which will break it down by state, or, if you choose to give them that information, your individual taxes. They even have a trade off calculator.

 

Which Brings Us Here

I want to know what the budget would look like if everybody had a say. If each person could allot their dollars, no matter how small the tax bill or how large, what would that look like in the aggregate? Would the pie chart look essentially the same?