I can't believe I didn't focus on this before.
A week ago, Shan Carter and Amanda Cox at the New York Times published this very cool, fun, interesting, and interactive chart that shows the different components of the federal budget in a way that analysts, geeks, observers, and commenters up to now have only dreamed about. It puts to shame the static pie chart that has been used in the budget itself for decades.
What's most impressive and useful is the way the chart displays a great deal of information both visually and with text that provides the actual numbers. Also, check out the buttons at the top left of the chart. In particular, click on "Hide Mandatory Spending," and be amazed at how simply and easily it tells you all you really need to know about the federal budget debate.
The only thing missing is a similar chart for revenues. Shan and Amanda?
I was so impressed with this chart that I asked my into-computers contacts how it was done so that we here at CG&G could do some ourselves. For those who are interested, it was done using Flash, which clearly is a great way to display government data interactively.
Note to the White House, CBO, and House and Senate Budget Committees: Get on this bandwagon and make life better for all of us.
Neat Chart
Too bad it subscribes to typical liberal canards...The entire budget of the DOE is lumped in defense.
Social Security expenses split between two categories (OASI separated from SSI).
Still and all, a pretty good way to look at the budget.
The comparisons are also a bit skewed because the 2010 number include the supposedly "temporary" stimulus spending. That makes the chart a lot less green than it really should be.
Note to Stan, who is in the market for new technology
The iPad will not support Flash. (It would be cruel of me to note that it will not do so b/c Flash is a bandwidth hog and the iPad will primarily use AT&T's network as if that were cause and effect, so I won't.)
Common comp sci diagram
This is a fairly standard class of diagram in computer science; Flash is not at all necessary to generate it. The interactivity options would change with other technologies, but there's no reason these kind of charts can't be generated for other data targets (such as revenues, as you suggest), regardless.
Also, to address SteveinCH, it's very easy to construct one with a non-partisan tilt on the data (I don't know about the methodology they used for this one, so I won't make claims about it's non-/partisanship). The simplest way, to me, would just be to take every major heading in the different sub-groupings of the budget and display that as the breakdown per department.