Budget Matters Blog

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and President Obama/ White House photo by Chuck Kennedy

A better-than-expected cash flow at the U.S. Treasury has turned May 18 into just any old day.

That was supposed to be the deadline for lawmakers to come to an agreement on raising the debt ceiling, which is the limit Congress places on its own borrowing. But the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are expected to send tens of billions of dollars in profits to the Treasury over the coming months, while government spending has gone down due to the cuts of sequestration. That ...

Photo by U.S. Embassy, Santiago Chile

How much money does the U.S. spend on foreign? "Very little," I wrote back in October.

But some readers rightly critized that characterization of U.S. foreign aid spending. Indeed, while foreign aid is well under 1 percent of the total U.S. federal budget, it's still counted in the multiple tens of billions of dollars – around $23 billion this year, or a total of $37 billion if you include assistance to foreign militaries. And that, of course, is a lot of money. Here are the precise figures:

Foreign Aid

In ...

The Medicare program accounts for around 14 percent of the entire federal budget, but you wouldn’t know it from USAspending.gov. USAspending.gov is a website that’s supposed to make government spending transparent. But if you use it to investigate how much the government spent on Medicare benefits last year, you’ll find a surprising number: zero. That’s not a reporting error; there are many such problems in USAspending.gov, and it’s a sign of opaque government. In 2012 Washington actually spent more than $500 billion on Medicare. Citizens should have access to that information – both ...

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? This simple chart breaks down each income tax dollar – to the tenth of a penny.

We don't stop there, though. We'll write you a personalized tax receipt. Enter how much you paid in income taxes, and we'll show exactly how much you personally contributed to things ranging from the military and nuclear weapons to disaster relief and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

But the ...

President Obama in the Oval Office/ White House flickr

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.

5. The president's budget would reduce Social Security cost-of-living adjustments through "chained CPI."

President Obama became the first Democratic president ever to propose reductions in Social Security benefits by endorsing an alternate measure of inflation – known as chained CPI – to shrink cost-of-living adjustments for retirees. The president plans to save $230 ...

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.

And get this:

We'll write you a personalized tax receipt

You can share the average taxpayer's receipt on Facebook and Twitter

Four Ways to Take Action

Want to learn more and stay updated? Sign up for our email list.

Think your friends would like to know about this tool? Join NPP ...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scheduled votes on a 2013 spending bill for this week

Photo licensed under Creative Commons

TL;DR

No. There is no federal budget for fiscal 2013, which began on Oct. 1, 2012.

What's Going On?

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 – just a week from today. If lawmakers don't pass new legislation, the federal government will shut down on March 28. An extra complication in ...

Rep. Paul Ryan. Photo by Gage Skidmore/ Creative Commons license

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. We have detailed analysis of all three. Here are the top five things to know:

5. Rep. Paul Ryan and the House would make deep cuts in spending, in large part by reducing programs for low-income people

Rep. Ryan proposes $5.7 trillion in spending cuts to be implemented over 10 years. Similar to his budget last year ...

Rep. Paul Ryan. Photo by Gage Skidmore/ Creative Commons license

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. Rep. Ryan once again proposes reducing tax rates for top earners and corporations while closing loopholes in the tax code, though he does not specify which loopholes. His budget would once again prevent cuts to military spending.

His proposal breaks new ...

President Obama in February 2012, the last time he released a budget proposal/ White House flickr

There's No Federal Budget

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.

There hasn’t been a real budget in place since Oct. 1, 2012, which was the start of the government’s fiscal year 2013. (If you’ve heard that we haven’t had a budget in four years, that’s true only for ...