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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Nancy Albert, of San Juan, Puerto Rico asks how much do we spend on the CIA, and where in the budget would you find that money?The short answer is, we don't know. Now here's the longer answer, which includes what we do know about what the government spends on intelligence, ...

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.

In a recent blog my colleague Mattea noted that a February poll by the Hill of likely voters found that the top priority for 45 percent of respondents was "job creation." In close second, with 40 percent, was "cutting spending." Support for cutting government spending is certainly the result of ...

The presidential election is about voters’ vision for how the federal government should serve the American people. National Priorities Project’s Primary Stakes series examines how residents of primary states currently rely on assistance from the federal government, and two Super Tuesday states illustrate that support from the federal government—and taxes ...

Many of our Facebook fans have been asking why National Priorities Project includes Social Security in charts about federal spending. If Social Security is funded by a dedicated source—your payroll taxes, also called FICA—then shouldn’t Social Security be shown separately from other kinds of federal spending? Most of the cost ...

Senior research analyst Mattea Kramer looks through the President's budget proposal to find out what is designated for job creation.     Want to make sure you don't miss any of our videos? Subscribe to NPP's YouTube Channel!