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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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.