Social Sciences and History / Unit 8 SSH 0739 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Deficit, Debt, Mandatory, Discretionary: The Budget's Vocabulary
The idea
The exam tests the budget's vocabulary as pairs, and the anchor's key terms supply them. Deficit: the annual amount by which expenditures exceed revenues. Debt: the total the government owes across all years. Mandatory spending: earmarked for entitlement programs that guarantee support to those who qualify, needing no annual vote. Discretionary spending: what Congress must pass legislation to authorize each year. Progressive tax: the effective rate rises with income. Regressive tax: the overall rate falls as income rises. Excise taxes fall on specific goods. The Congressional Budget Office scores every bill's budget effect. A recession is two consecutive quarters without growth. Before the Depression policy was laissez-faire; Keynesian policy emphasized government spending to raise consumption; supply-side policy ties growth to productive capacity.
In practice
Given "this year's shortfall", deficit. Given "the accumulated total", debt. Given "Social Security's outlays", mandatory. Given "the defense appropriation", discretionary. Given "a sales tax that takes a larger share of a poor family's income", regressive. Given "a rate schedule that rises with income", progressive.
Where people slip
The trap is the anchor's sentence that Keynesian policies helped raise the country out of the Depression; that is one reading, voiced as the anchor's, and units 14 and 15 carry the economists' definitions. The second trap is the anchor's "Federal Reserve Board" setting rates; the course says the Federal Reserve.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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