Budget Matters Blog

In just over a month, hackers will descend on over 80 locations across the United States, including Amherst, Massachusetts. But don’t worry—these are civic hackers: volunteer technologists, designers, and citizens coming together and using publicly-released data to solve challenges relevant to their towns and states.

In January, President Obama called for a national day of civic hacking. National Priorities Project heard the call and put Western Massachusetts on the map of national and international events taking place on June 1-2, 2013.

NPP is offering up our federal budget data and partnering with a great team of local organizers ...

When President Obama released his FY2014 budget, he endorsed a plan to use an alternate measure of inflation – known as chained CPI – to shrink the cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security beneficiaries.

Social Security Programs

Social Security insurance covers more than just retirees; benefits are also paid to those with disabilities and family members of deceased workers. Combined, these groups received about $720 billion in benefits during fiscal year 2011.

The newly-updated Federal Priorities Database has state and county-level spending data for all three of these groups: 

Social Security retirement benefits

Social Security disability benefits

Social Security survivors benefits

Nearly 90 ...

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 ...

During the 2012 presidential election, many speculated that voters receiving the most assistance from federal programs are the most likely to vote Democratic.

Last week, Alex Klein from Newsweek and The Daily Beast published Why the Republican Party’s Narrative on Income and Voting Failed, an article that uses NPP’s Federal Priorities Database to take a closer look at that claim.

For nearly every U.S. county, he compared Federal Aid to Individuals and voting records from the 2012 race, finding no correlation between the two.

Chart courtesy of Alex Klein and The Daily Beast

So what does this ...

We're introducing a new weekly data feature to showcase our Federal Priorities Database and help folks make the best use of it. Not sure what the database is? It's a collection of information we've pulled from many, many federal government agencies and compiled into one easy-to-use search tool. We think it’s important for people to see how the US spends money and how that money impacts our quality of life.

We’ll start at the beginning and describe how to run a database search in three easy steps.

Step 1: Where do you go?

To get ...

Back in June, NPP soft-launched a new version of our Federal Priorities Database.  After incorporating some feedback, we’re ready for a wider audience.The Federal Priorities Database sits on top of information we’ve collected from various government agencies.  It provides a single interface for seeing everything from state emissions to average teacher salaries to the amount of money the US spends on food stamps.The goal? Show the local impact of federal spending , the trends in social indicators, and the relationship between the two. One way we'll do that is to feature data stories on NPP’s ...

To date, this space has been used by National Priorities Project's budget experts to supplement our datasets and other online resources.As NPP's new database manager, I'd like to add some technical commentary to the mix. There’s a few exciting projects in the works—projects that will extend the reach of our publications, analysis, and curated data.New Database Search InterfaceNPP’s online database is unique because it supplements Federal government spending numbers with demographic, education, environment, health, and military indicators.Truthfully, the database’s front-end is looking stale.  But later this spring we’re launching ...