Spend the Federal Budget!
Go on a $622 billion spending spree! Wah! What fun! Hooray!
The US government gets to spend about that much money to spend in its "discretionary budget." as of fiscal year 2001. That's only about one third of the $1.8 trillion total budget; the rest of it is all earmarked in a very fixed sort of way for social security, medicare, medicaid, interest on debt, and stuff like that. It's untouchable, so we won't bother with it here.)
How would you spend that money? Here are the major categories in the real US budget (and a couple of minor ones, normally buried, that we've brought up front, like art, because we can). So go ahead, take your huge quivering pile of billions and divvy it up. Then, thanks to a little Bonkworld PHP magic, you'll get to compare your choices with the government's actual choices and the combined average results of everyone else who plays our little game.
Note: You're working in billions. You can use fractions (e.g., 2.5 for two and a half billion or 0.5 for 500 million or 0.05 for 50 million and so on). Don't worry about making it add up to exactly 622--just put in whatever numbers you think you want, and hit the submit button. The magic computer gods will tell you how much you spent and whether you need to spend more or less. Then you can use your "back button" to fine tune it. In the end, it does need to add up to exactly 622 in order to generate the rest of the results. You can always dump any excess into either "additional debt reduction" or "tax rebates" if you want. Also, all categories are optional and can be left blank. So go ahead, plunge in, give it a try, and have fun!
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