Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/United States federal budget, 2009


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep and improve. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 06:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

United States federal budget, 2009

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Nominated for deletion per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. All information is simply a summary of the primary source website (the US government) with no secondary sources provided. Regardless, the article is entirely unencyclopedic, any specific commentary on the President's 2009 budget submission (which is not provided here) is best left to other articles. The title is also misleading since the entire article is dedicated to the President's submission for the 2009 budget, rather than the actual US Government budget for 2009, so it has elements of WP:Crystal as well. Debate  木  13:40, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete my main concern is that it is simply a summary of the U.S. government's website information (a primary source). No secondary sources are provided. Happyme22 (talk) 17:27, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. There's no question that the topic is notable. Describing the President's submitted budget should only be part of the article, of course. But there is already media discussion of the details and as it works through Congress there will be more. --Dhartung | Talk 21:21, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep major legislation is notable--and this in its various forms is always the most important legislative act of the entire session. DGG (talk) 02:57, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  20:58, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete Where are the secondary sources discussing this budget? We may feel prepared to interpret and discuss budget requests but they are incredibly complex, written to obfuscate and inchoate in the extreme. The summary tables (30 pages) are wholly inadequate in providing an NPOV and independent look at the budget itself. We should not feel comfortable building this page from primary sources. Protonk (talk) 05:31, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  23:40, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment Explaining my above !vote. If secondary sources showing up which perform the analysis and present the numbers, then I am happy to reverse my vote, but the presence of those sources is VERY important.  Just a few examples:  The 'budget deficit' quoted in either CBO or OMB reports seems like a unitary term but it really is the conflation of two distinct budget processes, the on-budget material (defense, FEMA, NASA, etc) and off-budget material (Social Security, Medicare).  The proposed budgets usually include the off budget revenue along with the on-budget shortfall in order to make the deficit appear smaller.  It is not (often) clear which method of calculation is being used.  Also, when tax revenues or future costs are being collected, complex and arbitrary formulas are used to determine the future tax revenues (e.g. Obama's campaign budget assumes savings from conversion to EHR's and Bush's proposed budget assumes that the 2002 tax cuts were temporary--although it is/was the stated purpose of his administration to strive to make those cuts permanent).  Other assumptions exist (like estimation for road construction expenses) that are buried deep in the material but impact the total numbers presented.  I'm not saying that primary sources shouldn't be used, but an article like this will end up being misleading if the primary resource is presented uncritically and it would violate WP:OR to present novel criticism of the source matter in the article. Protonk (talk) 04:11, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep and improve This seems like a perfectly viable topic for an article, and should be improved rather than deleted. I imagine that this will receive masses of press coverage and there will be heaps of discussion, which should enable the article to be fleshed out. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:21, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep and improve per WP:POTENTIAL --Numyht (talk) 17:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep and improve reasonable and important subject material. Give author time to include other material on the subject as subject develops.Pdeitiker (talk) 22:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep and improve per WP:POTENTIAL. We're also going to have to reupload the information if we delete it so it's better to keep it. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:42, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the article up to the 2008 fiscal budget standards. It is now identical to the 2008 page with the exception of numbers and the year. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:53, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Reagan budget meta-article. This gives us a good idea of how hard it is to tease facts from the budget as a primary source SPECIFICALLY (as in, in comparison to other possible primary sources).  While I'm not accusing the OMB today of the mendacity of budget directors past (not explicitly, at least), it is not in their interests to be truthful.  I see posts about WP:POTENTIAL.  that's all well and good, but there is nothing here (save the cool graphic!) that can't be recreated when proper secondary sourcing exists.  This isn't a stub which just hasn't seen enough TLC.  Also, there is ZERO benefit for us to be ahead of the news cycle in any way.  If the article on the 2009 federal budget proposal from the president doesn't get written until December, well after the budget has passes, we lose nothing.  We are better off presenting the budget in the context of a full and proper analysis later rather than presenting it uncritically now.  To me, this falls more broadly under WP:NOT.  Minds may differ on that characterization. Protonk (talk) 16:40, 29 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.