The budget board
Deficit under your budget
$2.05t
vs. baseline+$0b
Spending$6.85t
Revenue$4.80t
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Every lever here is honest. There is no free money: cut a program and the app tells you what that program does. Raise a tax and it says who pays .

Spending

Drag down to cut · drag up to expand

Social Security

$1.45t

Monthly retirement, survivor, and disability benefits to roughly 68 million people — for most retirees it is the majority of their income.

Medicare

$1.02t

Health coverage for people 65+ and many with disabilities — hospital stays, doctor visits, and prescription drugs.

Medicaid & CHIP

$620b

The federal share of health coverage for low-income families, children, people with disabilities, and most nursing-home care.

National Defense

$850b

Pay and benefits for service members, ships, aircraft, weapons, operations, and military readiness worldwide.

Income Security

$480b

SNAP (food assistance), unemployment insurance, the refundable tax credits, SSI, and housing aid — the safety net during hard times.

Veterans' Benefits

$320b

Disability compensation, pensions, and VA health care earned by those who served in the armed forces.

Other Health

$200b

ACA marketplace subsidies, public-health agencies (CDC/NIH-adjacent operations), and other non-Medicare health spending.

Education & Training

$150b

Title I aid to high-poverty schools, Pell Grants for college, special-education (IDEA) funding, and workforce training.

Transportation

$110b

Highways, bridges, transit, air-traffic control, and rail — the physical network that moves people and goods.

Net Interest on the Debt

$950b
Not a lever — contractual. You shrink this by running smaller deficits, not by voting.

Interest owed on money already borrowed. This is contractual — it is not a program you can vote to cut, only something deficits make bigger over time.

Everything Else

$700b

Science and NASA, courts and law enforcement, diplomacy and foreign aid, national parks, agriculture, the IRS, and the rest of government operations.

Revenue

Drag up to raise · drag down to cut

Individual Income Tax

$2.35t

The single largest source of federal revenue — taxes on wages, salaries, and investment income, collected through the bracket system.

Payroll Tax

$1.70t

Social Security and Medicare taxes split between workers and employers — dedicated funding for those two programs.

Corporate Income Tax

$420b

Tax on corporate profits. Economists disagree on how much is ultimately borne by shareholders versus workers.

Other Receipts

$330b

Excise taxes (fuel, alcohol, tobacco), customs duties and tariffs, estate and gift taxes, and Federal Reserve remittances.

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