The Medicare program accounts for around 14 percent of the entire federal budget, but you wouldn’t know it from USAspending.gov, a website that’s supposed to make government spending transparent. If you use it to investigate how much the government spent on Medicare benefits last year, you’ll find a surprising number: zero.

After heroic feats of arithmetic and a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine interpretation of opaque rules and guidelines, millions of Americans will file their taxes by today, April 15. But where does all that money actually go?

Today President Obama released his fiscal 2014 budget proposal, which set a record for arriving two months after the legal deadline of the first Monday in February. Here are the top five things to know about the new budget.

Taxes are due on April 15 – right around the corner – though few Americans know where their taxes actually go. So NPP is launching Tax Day 2013 – a suite of materials, including this chart that shows how Washington spent every one of your income tax dollars in 2012.

Last week I explained that the federal government is operating on a temporary spending bill called a continuing resolution instead of a real budget for fiscal 2013. That continuing resolution expires on March 27. If lawmakers don't pass new legislation the federal government will shut down on March 28. Here's what's happening.

Three budget proposals for 2014 arrived in Congress this week – one authored by House Budget Chair Paul Ryan, another by Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray, and one by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Here are the top five things to know.

Today House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan released his budget resolution for fiscal 2014. The proposal includes many of the same elements as his proposal last year – including deep cuts to spending on health care and safety-net programs like food stamps, plus reductions in many other kinds of spending.

News about the federal budget is almost impossible to follow, so here’s some straight talk about whether or not there’s a federal budget for 2013 and why things are even worse than they seem.

All signs point to sequestration taking effect as scheduled tomorrow, March 1. To bring you right up to date, here are alternatives to sequestration that have been proposed by both parties.

By now you've heard that federal budget cuts will take effect on Friday. And you've heard the strange-sounding name for these cuts: sequestration. No one thought the cuts would actually take effect, but now – it is near certain – they will, and the fallout will reach all of us.