Earlier this week, National Priorities Project released Federal Money on the Rise in Florida, Nevada, a look at the role of federal money in the states.  Just a few of our findings:

For every dollar of revenue in the Florida state budget in 2010, 35 cents came from the federal government.

In 2010, the average Floridian paid about $5,500 in federal taxes and received about $6,600 in direct federal assistance, such as unemployment compensation or Social Security benefits.

Nevada residents paid slightly more in federal taxes than they received in direct federal assistance.

We’ll be putting more ...

Senior research analyst Chris Hellman takes a look at the energy policies laid out in last week's State of the Union address. You can find the full text of President Obama's address here.

Jackie Bray is a single mother who lost her job as a mechanic but has a new one working at a wind turbine factory in Charlotte, North Carolina. In his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night, President Obama used this story to illustrate his vision for America’s economy. His focus was on the middle class and a government that will create the conditions for the middle class to flourish. To that end, he described measures for tax reform, domestic job creation, consumer protection, and regulation of financial institutions. The president also described his strategy to expand America ...

This is the latest entry in NPP’s weekly Data Wednesday series, a getting-started guide to NPP’s Federal Priorities Database.  All previous posts are archived here.

So you’ve run a great search in the database, and now you want to share the information. For example, you want to show your friends the Federal Tax Collections data so they can see the federal tax dollars paid by people and businesses in their state.

You could certainly send them to the Search the Database page, tell them to pick the Federal Tax Collections indicator, and have them press the Map ...

Senior research analyst Mattea Kramer talks about what NPP is expecting in President Obama's State of the Union Address on Tuesday night, including job creation measures and proposed higher taxes on the wealthiest earners. Watch President Obama's State of the Union Address on Tuesday Jan. 24 at 9pm EST.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the State of the Union address is important in part because it gives a preview of the president’s forthcoming budget request. (In early February President Obama will release his budget request for fiscal year 2013, which begins on October 1, 2012.) National Priorities Project will release a series of materials analyzing the budget request.

In the meantime, we’ve kept an ear to the ground about what to expect in the president’s 2013 budget, and we’ll be watching the State of the Union on Tuesday night for more information. Here ...

On Tuesday night President Obama will give the final State of the Union address of his first term. Much speculation precedes the address, and much analysis follows. But why does the State of the Union matter so much?

One reason the State of the Union has been important historically is that it offers highlights of what the president will include in his budget request for the coming fiscal year. The president’s budget request is released every year in early February and typically gives the country a blueprint of the federal government’s priorities for the coming year. The past ...

This is the latest entry in NPP’s weekly Data Wednesday series, a getting-started guide to our Federal Priorities Database. All previous posts are archived here.

During past weeks, we’ve been working with state-level data; however, NPP has county-level data too. County-level data is a great way to understand how federal spending impacts local areas.

County-level information isn’t available for everything in the Federal Priorities Database. The easiest way to find it is to use an Advanced Search (don’t worry—it’s easy):

Visit the Create Your Own Search screen.

Click the Advanced Search checkbox.

You’ll ...

Senior research analyst Chris Hellman explains changes at the Pentagon.

On January 5 Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Martin E. Dempsey – joined by President Obama in a rare visit to the Pentagon – rolled out the military’s new strategic plan.Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey’s briefing provided a modest amount of detail, but the basics are this: The U.S. military of the future will be smaller, but more agile. Post-Iraq and Afghanistan, the size of the Army and the Marine Corps will be reduced. The military will rely less on deploying troops to forward bases – there will be a ...

Our latest data story is an example of how we sometimes "operate" on published data to make it more usable and accessible. When doing this, our guiding principles are: do not jeopardize the original data's integrity, document the methodology of our computations/aggregations, and provide the original, raw data via a link to the source or our API.

We recently took some data from the IRS and made it even better. We call it Federal Tax Collections, and it shows federal taxes collected in a year. Although the IRS helpfully provides these numbers for each state, they break the ...

This is the latest entry in NPP’s weekly Data Wednesday series, intended to introduce new users to our Federal Priorities Database.  All posts are archived here.

In the last few weeks, we’ve discussed how to search NPP’s Federal Priorities Database and how to view your search results in map form and table form. But what if you’d like to download the data and use it for your own project?

It’s easy to move data out of the Federal Priorities Database and onto your own computer.  After you run a search, look for the Download box ...

Senior research analyst Mattea Kramer explains how much federal money flows into New Hampshire to assist New Hampshire residents and keep the state government solvent.

NPP recently examined the role of federal money in Iowa and New Hampshire. Key data in this report came from our Federal Priorities Database and are available to anyone interested in researching other states:

Federal Aid to Individuals (1993-2010)

Federal Tax Collection (1998-2010)

Federal Aid to Individuals

Using a report from the U.S. Census Bureau, we created Federal Aid to Individuals to explore total federal spending on direct assistance for individuals. These numbers include everything from Pell grants to federal employee retirement benefits to Social Security payments.

You can see Federal Aid to Individuals here. The default view is ...

This is the latest entry in NPP’s Data Wednesday series, intended to introduce new users to our Federal Priorities Database.  All posts are archived here.

In the last few weeks, we’ve discussed how to search NPP’s Federal Priorities Database and how to interpret the data map. The map is useful because the colors allow you to quickly compare results between states. Sometimes, though, it’s more useful to see your results in a table, which displays data for all states and years in a single view.

It’s easy to switch from the map to a table ...

This month the first voters head to the polls to decide who will be the Republican nominee for president. National Priorities Project took a look at the extent to which residents of the first primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, receive federal support—even if they may be unaware of it.

Read the two-page report.