This week, we spotlight our Voter’s Guides on health care and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to give you the current state of federal health care policy and spending before the November 4 election.

From California’s agricultural Central Valley to cities like Detroit and Washington, DC, to coal mining towns in Appalachia, federal aid to individuals touches communities in many ways. NPP previews a new State Smart dataset showing you how.

NPP Executive Director Doug Hall will present at the Participatory Budgeting Conference taking place in San Francisco on September 25-27 on how to influence the federal budget process. In honor of the power of participation, we bring you a guest post from Tarsi Dunlop, of the Roosevelt Institute, on what participatory budgeting is and why cities should adopt it.

Americans say that ensuring the Social Security system and improving the job situation in our country are two of the most important issues facing Congress and the president in 2014. Here at NPP we have developed a set of Voter’s Guides that break down key federal budget issues like these into easily digestible facts and provide you with important questions for the candidates.

Congress has settled how the government will spend billions of dollars over the next couple of months. From Syria to our own homegrown border crisis, here’s what you need to know.

Even the Pentagon has called climate change a national security threat. Why do we spend so little on climate change initiatives compared to so much on other programs?

NPP profiles another State Smart dataset, this time highlighting state federal tax contributions.

We’ve been hearing the terms “tax reform” and “corporate inversions” from lawmakers and the media all year long. But what does it all mean? Here at NPP we have created a series of Voter’s Guides to break down key federal budget issues and even provide you with questions for the candidates.

In the wake of President Obama’s speech to the nation last Wednesday, and with a bill in Congress today authorizing further military action against ISIS, we are left with several troubling questions.  At the top of the list are such critical, unanswered, questions as: Is military action, and the use...

As the first in a series of releases leading up to State Smart, NPP profiles federal contract spending in the states, with a spotlight on the Department of Defense.