President Barack Obama’s budget today will outline his ideas for how the government may spend more than $3 trillion in the next fiscal year, starting Oct. 1. There’s no similar document accounting for where taxpayers’ money actually goes.

The nation’s budget has more than doubled in the past decade, pushing the annual deficit to more than $1 trillion and the national debt to $15.2 trillion. Spending dominates the political agenda, with at least three presidential candidates advocating the elimination of entire Cabinet agencies, while billionaires and street protesters debate raising taxes on the wealthy. Yet government institutions that track expenses differ in their estimates by billions of dollars, making the budget process less transparent to taxpayers.

Bloomberg, 13 Feb 2012

The U.S. Navy would move to stop any Iranian attempt to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz or Persian Gulf as an “act of war” the international community wouldn’t tolerate, the U.S. Navy’s top Gulf commander said.

Iran’s inventory of thousands of mines “represents an indiscriminate and very difficult maritime problem,” comparable to the improvised roadside bombs used in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill U.S. troops, Vice Admiral Mark Fox, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, told reporters at his Bahrain headquarters and on a conference call today.

“The laying of mines in international waters is an act of war,” Fox said today. “We would, under the direction of the national leadership, prevent that from happening. We always have the right and obligation of self-defense and this falls in ‘self-defense.’

‘‘If we did nothing and allowed some’’ mining, ‘‘it would be a long and difficult process to clear them,’’ Fox said.