Death and Taxes: 2009
About Death and Taxes
"Death and Taxes:2009" is a representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes. The data is from the President's budget request for 2009. It will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress by October 1st to begin the fiscal year.
The poster provides a uniquely revealing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congress, and the will of the people. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster.
You should buy the poster too, while you're at it.
The poster ships anywhere in the US for just $29.99 (including shipping). Quantity discounts are available.
Purchase Information
Are you a curious citizen?
Do you really know how your money is spent? Death and Taxes: 2009 is the ultimate primer for enlightened citizens. The data and design cut straight through the political rhetoric to reveal a candid look at our national priorities. This poster is a glimpse into our very near future. Find out where we are headed; buy the poster today!
"Talk about representing something extremely complex that perhaps very few people in the US government have a handle on. Well here it is. Laid out, easy to read and compare. With data straight from the White House"
-Avinash Kaushik, Occam's Razor
Are you a student or educator?
The Death and Taxes poster is on display in the classrooms and offices of hundreds of schools, universities and educational institutions. It even hangs in the Pentagon and Congressional offices. What better way to engage inquiring minds about a topic so important yet elusive and mired in budget documents thousands of pages long. Even if they don't pay taxes yet, this poster is the largest and most comprehensive depiction of the federal government ever. Bring this dense and rich information to light; buy the poster today!
"Everyone is enamored with your budget graph! My students really liked seeing the "big picture" and some students commented that they were "visual people" and it improved their understanding of the federal budget. It is quite a conversation piece! Great idea!"
George M. Yacus, Ph.D.
Are you a government contractor or financial services company?
Where does all the money flow? Who are winners and losers of the appropriation process? With over 500 line items, the data is all here and easy to navigate. You work hard making sure you and your companies pay as little taxes as possible; it's time to familiarize yourself with where it goes when it leaves your bank account. They make great and unique corporate gifts so buy the poster today! (Bulk discounts available)
We were looking for a fun and unique way to show our government contractor clients how much we appreciate their business. We purchased a large quantity of the "Death and Taxes" posters and sent one to each of them. We were overwhelmed by the positive response and requests for additional posters. In a matter of days we had made a lasting impression and exhausted our supply. This year we are doubling our order and expanding the campaign to include both clients and prospects. We are also providing source information about the poster on our new government contracting blog, to help address the many requests we receive
Hope A. Lane Officer Aronson & Company
Are you an information junkie or visualization enthusiast?
Over 500 departments, programs, and line items can be easily found in six square feet of this high quality poster. Death and Taxes is so rich with information you could look at it for hours and be lost in a sea of sweet data. When was the last time the artwork on your walls had replay value? Death and Taxes isn't just any old data set; it is information that you are already invested in, since paid for a small part of everything on the poster. Put your artwork to use and enjoy this referential beauty; buy the poster today!
You would be hard pressed to find a more complex budget. The visualization conveys a tremendous amount of information in a small space, well 24x36"
simplecomplexity.net
"I finally got my copy of your graph in the mail. From one graph designer to another, great work! I will put it beside my copy of Edward Tufte's "Napoleon's March" -- another great work in data organization."
Vaughn D. Taylor, LiberalRevolt.com
Latest News
Jess Bachman, the creator of "Death and Taxes" will be on The Martha Stewart Show live on April 15th at 10 AM EST. Check your local listings. Don't miss it!
What People Are Saying
"I have your chart hanging in my office - I work for the Dept. of Defense, and I enjoy reminding my fellow civil servants of the trust and confidence placed in us by the taxpayer, as evidenced by the sheer magnitude of dollars they send us. For me, it's a helpful reminder of how lucky I am to work here and that I'd better accomplish something meaningful with these resources."
-Kevin Marlowe, Director, Strategic Plans and Policy USJFCOM Joint Systems Integration Command
"You would be hard pressed to find a more complex budget. The visualization conveys a tremendous amount of information in a small space, well 24x36"-simplecomplexity.net
"If you ever wanted a visual representation of federal budget appropriations, thebudgetgraph.com has a great poster for just that."
-Center for American Progress
"A stupendous graph. I've always been a fan of clever design imparting huge amounts of information in a graphical display."-npr.org
"Talk about representing something extremely complex that perhaps very few people in the US government have a handle on. Well here it is. Laid out, easy to read and compare. With data straight from the White House"-Avinash Kaushik, Occam's Razor
"I finally got my copy of your graph in the mail. From one graph designer to another, great work! I will put it beside my copy of Edward Tufte's "Napoleon's March" -- another great work in data organization."
-Vaughn D. Taylor, LiberalRevolt.com
"I got your Death and Taxes 2007 poster for my boyfriend - it was his birthday yesterday, and he absolutely loved it! We could not take our eyes off it. You did a magnificent job on this, it's well put together and very easy to read and understand, the quality of the paper was impressive too."
-Vanessa from Raleigh, NC
"Your poster is extra cool. But you probably hear that a lot. I have shown it to my graphic design students as a great example of information design"
-Chris Ramsay, www.cia.edu
"If you want a daily reminder of where all the tax money that doesn't go intoo your paycheck actually goes, then put this stunning new poster up on your wall. You may be relieved just to see what a magnificent display the people at budgetgraph.com can make materialize out of those dollars that seem to disappear so abstractly from your paycheck."
-opencongress.org
"The poster has gotten great responses from our clients, at our events and from visitors to our office. I haven't been able to distribute them to everyone that asked for fear of running out. I'm down to only six posters. We are definitely interested in increasing our order this year to 200."
Hope A. Lane Officer Aronson & Company
"Everyone is enamored with your budget graph! My students really liked seeing the "big picture" and some students commented that they were "visual people" and it improved their understanding of the federal budget. It is quite a conversation piece! Great idea!"
George M. Yacus, Ph.D.
"I love my poster! I have it up here at work to remind all my fellow workers where every penny they make until around May goes.
I get a lot of folks stopping to check it out - it's actually depressing how much the government has grown, and your poster is a nice way to illustrate that without people losing interest in the explanation."
-Don C. Virginia
"I am Director of First-year Composition at Clemson University, and I put the poster in my office. I love it! My colleagues stop in to read it, and I still haven't picked up on all the info on it because it's so detailed. This coming semester I'm teaching a graduate course called "Serious Design," and we'll look at it with this approach. Thanks for creating it!"
Cynthia Hayes, Clemson University
"We have it up in the lobby of 5 Sylvan Learning Centers. Everyone who studies it is captivated. We point out that everything is proportional, and like to point to the Department of Education. Our clients are amazed, and often horrified, to see how Congress sees education relative to, say, the "War of Terror". You know, I hear government expenditures referred to all the time on the news, and sometimes they even say "this contrasts to the Department of Defense's budget of ....", but NEVER in the context of the whole budget. It's quite the learning experience to see it all in one place! "
Lee Pierce, Sylvan Learning Center.
"The poster is fantastic. I put it on the wall for the kids to look at. Some were overwhelmed by the magnitude of information but others really put their noses right to the paper to check things out. I also told many teachers about it. One teacher who had already had their kids create a simple pie graph of the discretionary budget really loved it and after she borrowed it for a few days she said that some kids who never really spoke or added to her class poured over it for days."
Josh Finkel, Massachusettes.
"I work in the [classified], and I must say that's quite a piece of work you've created. Working in [classified] requires a lot of graphical interpretation of the budget, and this is one of the most effective tools I've seen. I wish I had thought of it."
-Source requested anonymity.
"Great poster! I just got 2 of the 2008, one for work and one for home."
-Maureen Madden, CEO Mission Director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
"Your "Federal Government Budget Poster" is perhaps the single best display I have seen of where and how our tax dollars are spent. A wonderful graphic that makes it easy to see the relative budgeted dollars for each agency, bureau and organizational unit in the government. Terrific job of sorting out a complicated subject. "
Ron Cote' Vice President, SiloSmashers
Spread The Word
" We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate. "
-Thomas Jefferson
Knowledge of how your taxes are spent is essential to being a responsible citizen. If people actually knew what their thousands of dollars of income taxes paid for, there would be rioting in the streets, or at least demand some more accountability in Congress. Below are resources to help you spread the word. Feel free to resize and use them in anyway... just be sure to link back to www.WallStats.com . If you want larger portions of Death and Taxes let me know also.
Frequently Asked Questions
Data Questions
Why do you focus on the discretionary budget?
The discretionary budget funds all cabinet level departments and what is referred to most often when people think of the 'federal government.' It is the single largest part of the budget at one trillion dollars or roughly one third of pot. It is also the portion of the budget that Congress can easily push numbers around year to year which makes it a great tool for tracking our real national priorities. The total budget is depicted (not to scale) in the bottom right corner of the Death and Taxes poster.
Entitlement spending is also not included in detail for practical reasons. Social Security and Medicare cannot be broken down into small programs as other governmental departments can. The bulk of the funds are small payments to millions of people which cannot be graphed in the same manner as the rest of the poster. If entitlement spending were included to scale with the discretionary budget the overall detail of the poster would have to be decreased dramatically if the 24"x36" size were to me maintained.
What do you consider military or national security spending?
While many people think the military is confined to the Department of Defense, that is not the case. The government labels national defense funding as 050. This includes subfunction 051 for the Department of Defense, subfunction 053 for defense activities within the Department of Energy, and subfunction 054 for defense activities in a variety of other governmental departments.
The total for function 050 is $611.131 Billion of which the Department of Defense accounts for 84%.
In addition to that is $8.627 Billion for security funding in the Department of State. Such items include Foreign Military Financing, the Economic Support Fund, and other international security, peacekeeping and counterdrug operations.
The Department of Homeland Security contributes another $14.858 Billion to secure and protect our national borders.
The administration does not consider funding the Department of Veterans Affairs to be military related spending. I disagree. Funding for our veterans is directly proportional to the size of our military and increases during war time when the wounded need to be cared when they return home. I make no distinction between the funding of current and past troops. This adds another $44.764 Billion to the total.
Funding for the Global War on Terror is very confusing and hard to measure. The administration has $70 Billion as it's estimate for a supplemental GWOT appropriation. This figure is a placeholder pending further enactment of the FY 2008 request of which Congress only partially approved. The $70 Billion represents the absolute bare minimum the Department of Defense would need to bring everyone and everything home on the first day of the fiscal year. Obviously that won't happen and experts have pegged the 2009 GWOT spending in the $180-$200 Billion range. I use the $189.316 figure because it is from the FY 2008 spending requests and remains the most accurate information to date on GWOT spending.
So subtract the erroneous $70 Billion figure from function 050 and add a more accurate $189 Billion and you have close to $800 Billion for military and national security. A full and detailed explanation of all national security funding can be found here.
Where is agency XYZ?
While the poster contains over 500 items, it is not inclusive of every government agency. The main reasons why an agency or department was not depicted are because its budget was under $200 million, it's funding was paid for by offsetting receipts resulting in a small or nil budget authority, it was non-discretionary, or there simply was not enough room on the poster.
How come some numbers differ from last years poster?
The poster is of the President's February budget request. While the President may terminate a program, Congress may continue funding for it, and unless the President veto's the congressional resolution, funding will continue for the 2008 terminated program. This doesn't stop the President from trying to terminate it again the following year.
Why is the TSA not listed as national security related?
The Transportation Security Administration was originally part of the Department of Transportation but moved when the Department of Homeland Security was created. The TSA is a collection of low level security guards that used to be privately contracted by the airline or airport, and are now part of the federal government. Although increasingly airport security is contracted out again to private companies under the TSA's Screening Partnership Program. The two main goals of the TSA are airport security the prevention of aircraft hijacking and while these are important, they offer little in terms of national security. The TSA operates more like police for airports than any real counter terrorism program.
How come some circles are bigger than their parent circles?
This is because the funding for the large circles is not part of the discretionary budget or funded through loans and fees. Such is the case with the Small Business Administration which is a small department of $.468 billion managing a large amount of loans which are repaid.
Is the data accurate?
Yes. The figures used to create the graph come directly from the President's official budget request and the comptroller of the Department of Defense. The Intelligence budget figures are estimates from globalsecurity.org.
Shipping/Order Questions
How big is the poster?
The poster is 24''x36''. It is printed on high quality 100# semi gloss cover stock with an aqueous coating for protection. It is about as think as card stock. It will fit in all standard 24''x36'' sized frames.
How is the poster shipped?
The poster is shipped from two locations. It is shipped via UPS from the mid-west and via USPS from the east coast. Shipping generally takes 2-4 business days depending on your location. The posters are shipping in sturdy tubes for protection.
My poster was damaged during shipping, can I get a replacement?
Yes, 1 out of every 200 posters somehow gets mangled (usually by UPS). A replacement poster can be sent at no extra cost.
So you ship international?
Yes, posters have been shipped all over the world. Currently, however, you must contact me to place an international order.
Pricing
Buy 1 for $ 29.99 each, shipped
Buy 2 for $ 27.50 each, shipped ( save 10% )
Buy 3 for $ 25.00 each, shipped ( save 20% )
Buy 4+ for $ 22.50 each, shipped ( save 30% )
Note: For tiered pricing discounts, use the larger purchase button below, on the left.
