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 ...

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 ...

2007 Economic Census Data courtesy of the Census Bureau

In recent weeks, NPP has written about the effects of sequestration on education, transportation, and health programs. We’ve also released a series of state-level fact sheets about sequestration and the Pentagon. But what about the effect of sequestration on government-produced data?

Last month, the Commerce Department estimated that sequestration will cut a total of $46 million from the Census Bureau, delaying the release of critical economic and demographic data and delaying preparations for the 2020 census. NPP recently signed on to a letter from the Census Project urging that the ...

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 ...

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 ...