This week the U.S. Senate will consider a series of amendments to the budget resolution. A budget resolution sets out spending and revenue guidelines for Congress’s annual appropriations process.Except that the Senate won’t pass a budget resolution this year. To Hill watchers, this isn’t too surprising – the media is quick to point out the Senate hasn’t passed a budget resolution in three years. Although they usually just say “a budget,” which is technically wrong. But that’s another story.The House has already passed its own budget resolution introduced by House Budget Committee Chair ...

This week we announced the release of our new book A People’s Guide to the Federal Budget, and in yesterday’s blog post we admitted to being idealists: A book can change the world, we said. But it’s not just because we’re idealists that we think so. Consider the evidence.

Regular Americans can tackle federal budget deficits – when armed with information. A study by the Program for Public Consultation gave randomly-selected Americans solid budget information and asked them to consider trade-offs faced by lawmakers in Washington. Respondents made choices and cut deficits, most often by reducing military ...

National Priorities Project is thrilled to announce the release of our new book, A People's Guide to the Federal Budget. Call us idealists, but we at NPP believe that a little information goes a long way, and that a book can change history.

A People's Guide to the Federal Budget is a friendly, down-to-earth handbook for Americans of all ages and backgrounds who want to have a voice in our democracy and ensure the U.S. federal budget reflects their priorities. It's even got cartoons in it.

Most Americans say they're not happy with the way ...

Update 5/14/2012: The Senate is expected to consider its own version of the Department of Commerce/Census Bureau budget as early as Tuesday of this week. If you oppose the elimination of the American Community Survey, please contact your Senators and urge them to support the ACS.

5/10/2012: Today the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5326, the appropriations bill for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, NASA, and other related agencies.

H.R. 5326 includes an amendment that would prohibit the Department of Commerce from funding the American Community Survey (ACS), a yearly household survey ...

Debates about the federal budget rage on in Washington. Unfortunately, those debates are based on guesstimates rather than accurate information. That’s because there is no single, comprehensive source for federal spending data, as I wrote in a blog post earlier this week.

Federal spending transparency is not a partisan matter, and it’s not a luxury. It’s an urgent issue. What we need now is the will to make it happen.

NPP supports the DATA Act, which recently passed the House, and we’d like your help to make sure it comes up for a vote in the ...

Authority, Outlays, and Obligations: oh my!

We’ve been talking about the DATA Act this week because it represents an opportunity to improve our insight into how the U.S. federal government spends money. Tracking precise amounts of federal spending is tricky, but it’s critical to having an informed discussion about the budget.

“Federal spending” can mean different things. When Congress and the president pass a budget, they’re granting budget authority to federal agencies, which gives them the legal authority to spend money.

Once the agencies have budget authority, they enter into obligations, which essentially set money aside ...

A few weeks ago I was on the radio program Background Briefing with host Ian Masters. We were talking about National Priorities Project's Tax Day numbers, which show you how the federal government spent every penny of your income taxes in 2011.

"One sort of wishes the federal government provided these numbers," my host lamented.

In fact, the White House used to put out a Citizen's Guide to the Federal Budget every year, but it was discontinued during the George W. Bush presidency. President Obama has not resurrected the practice. Meanwhile, valuable information about how the federal government ...

During Pie Week, we’ve explored three types of federal spending pies: total, mandatory, and discretionary. Judging from your comments on our Facebook page, you have strong opinions about the numbers on these charts.

To wrap up the week, we think it’s important to see the spending charts next to one another and understand the relationships between them. Below is an experimental way to make these charts more interactive. Just hover over the pie slices and click them to see the detailed data.

Educational? Confusing? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

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Our final pie of Pie Week! We showed you total federal spending, mandatory spending, and discretionary spending. Today's flavor of pie? Where the money comes from to fund the federal budget.

Tomorrow we'll review all the great kinds of pie we brought your way this week.

Pie Week continues today with the part of the federal budget that often receives the most scrutiny: discretionary spending.

Discretionary spending is often the most scrutinized part of the federal budget because it's the part that lawmakers directly determine each year during the appropriations process. That makes discretionary spending different from mandatory spending, which is determined not at the discretion of lawmakers, but rather by how many people qualify for benefits from mandatory programs like Medicare. Check out yesterday's post for the mandatory pie.

And stay tuned! We'll have another fresh slice of pie for you tomorrow.