Last week I wrote about how automatic, across-the-board cuts scheduled to take effect in 2013 may never take place—because a new Congress can choose not to uphold budget cuts legislated by our current Congress.

 But it’s also worth asking, if the next Congress does uphold these automatic cuts, called “sequestration,” what would they mean for the federal budget? The answer is big. Let me show you.

If sequestration takes place, we will live in a world very different from our current one. The blue line shows spending in fiscal year 2010, the last year for which complete data ...

November 23rd is the deadline for the super committee, officially named the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. They’ve all but announced failure to come up with even $1 of their $1.2 trillion deficit reduction task. Since the creation of the super committee, we’ve been hearing there would be automatic, across-the-board cuts to security and non-security spending—called “sequestration”— if the committee failed its task.

Well, here we are. Bracing yourself?

If those cuts took effect, they would work out to around $55 billion cut from non-security discretionary spending every year for ten years, or roughly 13 ...

With its Nov. 23 deadline looming, members of the congressional “Super Committee” have a range of options as they try to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. Here are some of the possibilities:A Grand Bargain:  President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner tried negotiating a much larger deficit reduction package earlier this summer that included reforming entitlement programs, cutting security and non-security spending and increasing tax revenues, but it found little support among House Republicans. This week a bipartisan group of 100 House members and 45 Senators urged the Committee to adopt ...

Just like last year, the new fiscal year began on October 1, 2011 with no federal budget in place. And just like last year, the U.S. government is being funded through a Continuing Resolution (CR) – temporary spending legislation that provides funding at current levels for any federal agency whose annual appropriations bill has not yet been enacted by Congress. And yes, just like last year, the new fiscal year began with none – as in zero – of the twelve annual appropriations bills enacted.Hopefully, that is where the similarities end. Hopefully, but doubtful. If there is to be a FY2012 ...

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) between 1979 and 2007 income for the top 1 percent of households grew by 275 percent. The next 19 percent of households saw their income grow by 65 percent. Income grew 40 percent for the next 60 percent of households. The bottom 20 percent of households saw income growth of 18 percent. The figures were released in CBO's recent report  "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007." Further, CBO found that the share of income going to higher-income households rose, while the share going to lower-income households fell ...

It seems that these days, everyone has an opinion about how our federal budget should be spent, cut or balanced. 

Youth are disproportionately affected by budget cuts, but often don't have a voice in the debate -- until now.

The American Friends Service Committee and National Priorities Project are pleased to announce the second annual If I Had a Trillion Dollars (IHTD) national youth video contest.

The IHTD Youth Film Festival asks young people to speak out on the federal budget and to consider how our nation prioritizes spending and revenue generation.  

Who? The contest is open to individuals and ...

This week the Economic Policy Institute celebrates its 25th anniversary. We at National Priorities Project want to thank EPI for a quarter century of service, and for things like this chart, from the recent EPI report on income inequality:

This chart is a unique- and telling- way of examining the kind of income inequality that motivates many involved in the Occupy movement. The bottom 95 percent of Americans claimed 2.8 percent of capital income growth between 1979 and 2007. What is capital income growth? "Capital income" is money earned from investments like stocks and real estate. Thus, as capital ...