We’ve seen a lot of anxiety about the huge price tag of the stimulus bill winding its way through Congress. Some of the complaining is about the difficulty in understanding the contents of this complex legislation. Certainly the stimulus bill looks impenetrable if you try to sift through 700 pages of details or even a 25-page summary. In response many people evaluate it based on their gut feel.
To help out, we’ve created the Juice Stimulus Bill Explorer — a treemap visualization that summarizes the House version of the stimulus bill and let’s you vote on its pieces.
The data in this treemap comes from the 1/15/09 summary (pdf) of the House of Representatives version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Selecting any box will show a description of the individual program, the price tag, and an opportunity to express whether you like or dislike the idea. The treemap boxes are sized by the proposed cost of each program. The color is based on the average level of support for the program from user votes.
Thanks to Scott Love for encouraging us to put this together.
