Why We Wrote This Report

Why We Wrote This Report As American citizens / tax payers, we care about the future of our country. As investors, we search for data and insights to help us make better investment decisions. (It’s easier to predict the future with a keen understanding of the past.) We found ourselves searching for better information about the state of America’s financials, and we decided to assemble — in one place and in a user-friendly format — some of the best data about the world’s biggest “business.” In addition, we have attempted to provide some historical context for how USA Inc.’s financial model has evolved over decades. The complexity of USA Inc.’s challenges is well Known, and our presentation is just a starting point; it’s far from perfect or complete. But we are convinced that citizens — and investors — should understand the business of their government. Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville knew that — armed with the right information — the enlightened citizenry of America would make the right decisions. It is our humble hope that a transparent financial framework can help inform future debates. KP i USA Inc. | Introduction 9 What You'll Find Here... In the conviction that every citizen should understand the finances of USA Inc. and the plans of its “management team,” we examine USA Inc.’s income statement and balance sheet and present them in a basic, easy-to- use format. In this document, a broad group of people helped us drill into our federal government's basic financial metrics. We summarize our thoughts in PowerPoint form here and also have provided a brief text summary at www.kpcb.com/usainc. We encourage people to take our data and thoughts and study them, critique them, augment them, share them, and make them better. There’s a lot of material — think of it as a book that happens to be a slide presentation. KP a USA Inc. | Introduction 10 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020846