Steven Engelhardt

Long-time readers know that I have a bit of a penchant for error handling, especially with respect to exceptions. I just noticed that I have never, to my knowledge, posted about the classic article “Exception Handling: A False Sense of Security” by Tom Cargill.

Read it and weep.

While parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series are a start, there is still a lot left to understand about the Federal budget. To start:

• How do the numbers look adjusted for inflation? As a percentage of GDP?
• What was the actual source of new revenues? New spending?
• If the unified budget deficit was $247.7 billion and the on-budget budget deficit was $434.0 billion, why did the total national debt increase by $574.2 billion from 9/30/2005 to 9/29/2006? Where did the extra intragovernmental debt holdings come from?
• How are the revenue and spending numbers likely to change in the future? How will we deal with these changes?