Rebecca from Lititz, Pennsylvania, asked: Why are there different versions of the budget, and who decides which one becomes the actual budget for the federal government? It’s a good question. You might have read in the news recently about the House budget introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan. And back in ...

It's tax week here at National Priorities Project. You might have seen our Tax Day numbers, or watched our Tax Day video on YouTube, or gotten your personalized tax receipt. If you did, you saw that 27 cents of every 2011 federal income tax dollar went to the military, while ...

Tax day is a week away, and this year National Priorities Project writes you a receipt for how much you paid in federal income taxes-- so you can see exactly how much of your own 2011 income taxes went to the military, health programs, education, and everything else. But some ...

“I can’t remember a moment when the choice between competing visions of our future has been so clear,” the president said in a speech on Tuesday. He was talking about the stark differences between his budget and the budget resolution introduced last week by Rep. Paul Ryan (R- WI). National ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

I had an interesting discovery while combing through the numbers of the president's budget. I found that President Obama's spending priorities match pretty closely with the things Americans say they want. Of course the budget is complicated. But let’s say for a moment that it’s as simple as a public opinion polling question.

Kris from Concord, California, wrote in to ask how much aid the United States gives to foreign countries. Foreign aid and diplomacy together comprise around 1 percent of the federal budget, or $56 billion in President Obama’s 2013 budget request. That money goes toward global poverty alleviation, including a contribution ...