It's not just that they ask for demographic information before starting, it's that the choices for cuts are very limited (e.g. 4 items in National Defense), as are the choices for tax increases (2 of 3 in Individual Taxes). It's slanted to result in scary numbers that have little context.

The Concord Coalition's chairman is Peter G. Peterson - http://en.wikipedia....r_George_Peterson - former Commerce Secretary under Nixon (for 1 year), Senior Chairman of the Blackstone Group, and billionaire.

While he has a point that the government should not run huge deficits in normal times, and we should always work to leave the country in better shape than we found it, he seems to have a mania for cutting Social Security and Medicare.

Dean Baker isn't a fan - http://www.guardian....ty-peter-peterson

A Java-based federal budget simulator is here - http://www.kowaldesi...udget/budget.html (I had to reload it several times to get it to come up.) It has lots and lots of categories but still just barely scratches the surface of what Uncle Sam takes in and buys.

FWIW. :-)

Cheers,
Scott.