AP US GOVERNMENT
LINEBERRY CH 14 – THE CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENT, AND THE BUDGET
TERMS AND CONCEPTS
PP 441-457
Please outline the reading and then use the study guide to highlight this information.

TERMS

1. Budget: A policy document allocating burdens (taxes) and benefits (expenditures). Budgeting is concerned with translating financial resources into human purposes. A budget is also a series of goals with price tags attached. 2. Deficit: An excess of federal expenditures over federal revenue in a fiscal year. In other words, the national government spends more money that it receives in taxes. 3. Revenues: The financial resources of the government. The individual income tax and Social Security tax are two major sources of the federal government’s revenue. 4. Expenditures: Government spending of revenues. Major areas of federal spending are social services and national defense. 5. Income tax: Shares of individual wages and corporate revenues collected by the government. Enacted to pay for the Civil War by Congress; however, it was called the first step to a “communist march.” The Sixteenth Amendment explicitly authorized Congress to levy a tax on income. Furthermore, this is generally progressive—pays more and higher rates as it continues. 6. Excise tax: a tax levied on the manufacture, transportation, sale, or consumption of a good—for example, those on gasoline. 7. Progressive tax: A progressive tax is one that makes those with more taxable income not only pay more taxes, but also pay higher rates of tax on that income—some argue this is the fairest type of tax, because those who have the most money pay the higher rates. 8. Flat tax: A flat tax is one that allows everyone to be equally taxed on the same rate. 9. Federal debt: All of the money borrowed by the federal government over the years and still outstanding. Today