As the Pentagon scrambles to find ways to save money, the Defense Department has included in its fiscal year 2013 budget request a political bombshell – increasing beneficiary contributions to its healthcare programs.The Defense Department’s healthcare network – known as TRICARE – provides a range of benefit plans to active ...

Last week we received numerous questions about how Medicare is funded. The questions were brought on by the launch of Tax Day and confusion over why Social Security and Medicare showed up in charts on how your income taxes were spent in 2011.  As many of you pointed out, there ...

We've updated the following dataset, which is now current through 2010, the latest available information: Median Household Income As with our poverty data, we've changed the data source from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey to the American Community Survey, which is more accurate at the state level.

This week the House of Representatives will likely consider the fiscal year 2013 budget resolution, introduced by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee. Similar to last year’s budget resolution, Chairman Ryan’s proposal looks to cut the overall size of the federal budget and reduce the deficit ...

We’ve gotten lots of great e-mails and comments about Tax Day, which we launched on Friday. But there’s been some confusion about what’s included in our breakdown of your federal income tax dollar. There are two main sources of confusion: First, many people have written to ask why Tax Day ...

Ronda of Kennewick, Washington, wrote in to ask about tax revenues. In particular, she wanted to know if federal revenue has gone down over the past several decades with the enactment of lower tax rates and various tax exemptions. The answer is yes. Federal tax revenues as a share of ...

We've updated two of our indicators to reflect the latest available published data: Medicare Enrollment: updated through 2010 High School Dropouts: updated through the 2008-2009 school year

This is where the federal government spent each one of your federal income tax dollars in 2011: Once we pay our income taxes, they're designated by the U.S. Treasury as "federal funds," which means Congress and the president can use that money to fund just about any government activity. This ...

The president submitted his fiscal year 2013 budget request to Congress on Feb. 13. Earlier this week, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, unveiled his draft budget resolution. The role of the annual budget resolution is to set the overall spending limits that appropriators will use ...

In the last few months, Data Wednesday has covered all of the basics you need to know when using our Federal Priorities Database. We’ve covered so much ground, in fact, that it’s time for Data Wednesday to go on a hiatus. However, NPP would be more than happy to entertain ...