The Department of Energy oversees nuclear weapons sites, runs electric utilities, and subsidizes conventional and alternative fuels.
The department will spend $39 billion in 2012, or about $330 for every U.S. household. It employs 17,000 workers directly and oversees about 100,000 contract workers.
The Department of Commerce subsidizes businesses, restricts foreign trade, and oversees the Census Bureau and Patent Office.
The department will spend about $11 billion in 2012, or about $100 for every U.S. household. It employs 41,000 workers and operates more than 97 subsidy programs.
The Department of Labor oversees unemployment insurance, provides training programs, and imposes an array of union and workplace regulations.
The department will spend about $127 billion in fiscal 2012, or $1,100 for every U.S. household. It employs more than 17,000 workers.
It seem like it was just yesterday that congressional Republicans took the national debt hostage even though shooting it was never an option. Having just taken back control of the House on a wave of popular discontent over the federal government’s mounting red ink, the pressure was on the GOP to deliver.
It didn’t — and now the rout is on.
Twenty-three point nine trillion dollars. That will be our national debt in 2022 under the fiscal-cliff bill that just passed Congress. That’s nearly $4 trillion more than the current-law baseline, and while most of that comes from making the Bush tax cuts permanent for most Americans without offsetting the loss of revenue through spending cuts, at least $330 billion of the new debt results from the increased spending that was part of the deal. Our government debt will amount to more than 118 percent of GDP.
