How we spend money

In an earlier post (it was an op-ed piece) I referred to a study from the Center on Budget and Public Priorities.  Today, I came across this neat graphic (ht) that tells us the reality of the federal budget--that a whole bunch of discussions on items that take up most of the budget are actually off the table: defense, medicare, social security, ... so, at the end of it all, federal and state budget deliberations are essentially about small slices of the pie :(