What Is the Point of Budget Reporting?

That is a serious question. What are newspapers, radio and television stations, and Internet sites trying to accomplish when they report on the budget?

Presumably they are trying to convey information to their audience. This raises the question of why they so frequently just report budget numbers in billions or trillions of dollars; numbers that will be almost completely meaningless to the overwhelming majority of their audience.

This point is simple and straightforward. When a newspaper tell...