Time machine backups: Size of Mac HD Backup vs Mac HD on local machine

Hello,
Today I used Time Machine to backup the computer.  It completed the backup and now I want to *make sure* that the backup files and the local machine files are the same size; don't want to leave anything up to some program when so much is at stake.  
The problem: On the External HD, the size of the account I *MUST* have backed up is 20Gb.  When I look at the /Volumes/Mac HD/Users/##### I see the user account as being 45GB.
I'm pretty sure that Time Machine doesn't compress any of the files.  I am also aware of the changing nature of ~/Library and other similar files.
What is going on here?   Can I be sure that my backups are truly complete backups?
Other than looking at the folder size, how can I really know what the actual size is?
Any info would be great.
Thanks,
Allan

There is a wealth of Time Machine information here:
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
AC

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    snip
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