How does money from the federal budget affect you and your neighbors? Where do those Social Security, food stamp, and Medicaid dollars end up?

NPP has released the latest version of the Federal Priorities Database, the interactive tool that connects the dots between our tax dollars, the federal budget, and programs or services in your community. The Federal Priorities Database can answer these questions, and now it contains data from USASpending.gov.

USASpending.gov for the Average Citizen

Although USASpending.gov is a public website, it provides raw, low-level records and a search form that’s useful for data wonks like us but not for the average citizen. So we’ve made that data relevant and accessible by:

• Providing maps and tables for county-level data
• Allowing users to adjust for inflation and compare data year over year
• Displaying per capita spending in addition to total spending, allowing for comparisons between states and counties
• Providing downloadable spreadsheets and exports 

And while USASpending.gov has been criticized for being incomplete and inaccurate, it is currently the only government-provided source of localized, program-level data about federal spending. NPP is committed to making USASpending.gov understandable while at the same time advocating for increased oversight of the information it contains.

Getting Started

Visit the Federal Priorities Database to see what’s new, and also check out these additional resources:

• Federal Priorities Database Getting Started Guide
• Our series of in-depth database tutorials
• Federal Priorities Database data stories