Tracking federal spending is tricky, but it's critical to having an informed discussion about the budget. Because "federal spending" can mean different things and involves multiple sources of data, we often don't know exactly how much is spent on a particular program. The DATA Act wants to fix that.

The White House used to put out a Citizen's Guide to the Federal Budget every year, but it was discontinued during the George W. Bush presidency. President Obama has not resurrected the practice. Meanwhile, valuable information about how the federal government spends our tax dollars is going extinct