Economics 108  Fall 2005

Take-home detailed essay assignment

 

Due in class on Tuesday, October 4

 

From the list (available at the web-site below) of federal government agencies and departments, select an agency or department in order to undertake a budgetary review. You will use the FY2006 Budget of the United States Government as your research source. Here is what you are required to do:

 

  1. You must look at historical data and see how your agency’s importance has changed over the years since 1980 when compared to the overall budget, and prepare either a table or graph or both that makes that comparison. You don’t have to provide data for every year – every five years is sufficient. Some agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, don’t have a history that goes back that far. For them, use annual data from their date of inception.

 

  1. You must do some research and get a feel for what the agency does and what it spends money on and what the priorities seem to be.

 

  1. You must then find the detailed agency budget, carefully research it and find out, to the extent that time allows, the details of where the money goes. This should be very disaggregated. Look for unusual expenditures, anomalies,  or outlays that identify misplaced priorities (in you opinion) or that seem unusually large or small.  From this research you will use Excel to create an agency outlay table similar to the examples handed out with this assignment.

 

Having done all of this, here is what you must submit to me by Tuesday, October 4 at the start of class.  Note: this is one week later than the original date shown in the course calendar.

 

  1. An essay describing what you have learned about your agency and it’s budget. You should identify the agency’s purpose, it’s major programs, and its apparent priorities based upon relative spending. Discuss your agency’s relative growth. If you think some of the money is being wisely or poorly spent you should say so. You should identify any curiosities, anomalies, or programs that merit special attention. Generally offer your opinion on what you make of all that you have discovered.

 

  1. You must have the comparative chart or table that shows this agency’s relative growth over the years (described in step one at the top of the page).

 

  1. You must have a spreadsheet of the agency’s disaggregated budget (described in step two at the top of the page).

 

The written essay must be a minimum of four pages in length, double-spaced, with standard margins and a conventional font. Put a simple title and your name at the top of page one. This should be appended by the tables that I have asked for in steps two and three above. If you want, you can instead include those in the body of the essay but they cannot be included in the page count ... I want four pages of written work.

 

Do not put a cover page on the paper and do not bind it. Staple it. Do not supply a bibliography but do identify your sources in footnotes or endnotes.

 

 

 

Before beginning this assignment, you want to make sure that you have carefully read chapters 5 and 6 of Red Ink. Look at how I have broken down spending for select agencies or functions like energy and transportation, or for controversial programs like the Commodity Credit Corporation.

 

The FY 2006 budget is found at the GPO Access site

 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy06/browse.html

 

There you will see myriad documents, all in PDF format (some of the tables are in xls format).  Given the agency that you have chosen, you should begin by going to the agency budget document that represents that agency (you will see documents for Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, etc).  Read that document and be prepared to cite that document in your essay. At the end of this document you will find a data table showing a breakdown of that agency’s spending for 2004 and its projected spending for years into the future. This will give you a sense of where the money is spent, but is not sufficient by itself to give you a detailed picture.

 

Then you might go to the document called Historical Tables to see how the budget for your chosen agency or function has changed over the years, both absolutely and relative to the budget as a whole.

 

Finally, though, you will want a more detailed picture of your agency’s spending and you want to see if you can uncover any unusual expenditures or anomalies (like those reported in Red Ink from earlier budgetary years). For example, in the budget of the Department of Defense, how much is spent on military personnel as opposed to weapons systems? How is the FAA financed in the budget of the Department of Transportation.

 

To do this, you then need to go to the massive document called the Appendix, then find your agency, then start scouring down through the detailed budget to find all of the interesting details about your agency. Give yourself a few hours to do this! This is a detailed budget that really has a lot if information packed into it. You will learn a lot about your agency by carefully reviewing this document.

 

For certain issues or questions involving trust funds (if you are researching Medicare, Social Security, Highway programs, the FAA, etc), or federal employment,  these two chapters from the document entitled Analytic Perspectives have some very concrete data:

 

Chapter 22 Trust Funds and Federal Funds

Chapter 24 Federal Employment and Compensation

 

Some additional useful program information can be found in the XLS document entitled Federal Programs by Agency and Account.

 

Finally you are certainly free to Google around and try to find some other interesting supporting information about your agency or the program’s supported by your agency’s budget.

Be a good detective! Find our something interesting about your government!

 

Assemble it according to the instructions above, submit it to me, and I will pass on summary results to the class.