NPP’s Trade-offs allows citizens to see how funds were spent throughout the year, test out different spending choices, and, if they choose, to advocate for different priorities.
Federal program costs show lump sums for how much the government spent on various programs such as the Department of Defense or the National Endowment for the Humanities. These can then be reallocated to “trade-offs” that show more specific spending choices such as Head Start slots or VA medical care for veterans.
Current trade-offs are for the FY 2023 budget and in 2023 dollars, unless otherwise specified.
Unless otherwise noted, the source for these projected program costs are for the fiscal year and are from the Budget Authority data put out annually by the White House Office of Management and Budget and found here (scroll down to the Public Budget Database section and click Budget Authority).
Program costs reflect total spending estimates (discretionary and mandatory) for Fiscal Year 2023 and are in 2023 dollars. Please note that in some cases reported program costs are not mutually exclusive and therefore not cannot be added together; for instance, F-35 program costs are also included in the larger Military budget.
From budget authority for subfunctions: 051, 053, 054, 152. This includes the Department of Defense regular and war budgets, nuclear weapons activities, and international security assistance.
The amounts for 1% and 10% of the military budget are simply 1% and 10% of the total budget number.
As reported for FY 2023 spending in the Department of Defense Program Acquisition Cost by Weapons System as part of the Department of Defense FY 2024 budget request. This reflects the research and production costs of the F-35 program, but does not include costs related to aircraft that have already been purchased, such as maintenance and pilot training. This number is also part of the military total.
From the budget authority for the Bureau "Federal Prison System."
From the budget authority for bureaus "U.S. Customs and Border Protection" and "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement."
Budget authority subfunction 53 (Atomic energy defense activities), including maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, powering naval ship reactors, and coordinating nuclear response and nonproliferation activities. This spending is also part of the military total.
As reported for FY 2023 spending in the Department of Defense Program Acquisition Cost by Weapons System as part of the Department of Defense FY 2023 budget request. This reflects the research, production and modification costs of the drone programs, as well as fielding of Reaper aircraft and ground stations. It does not include related costs such as pilot training or mission costs. This spending is also part of the military total.
Includes "Contractual services & supplies" awarded by the Department of Defense in FY 2022, according to the USASpending.gov site, accessed April 7, 2023.
Includes the most recent available data for "dollars obligated" reported for FY 2021 for all Department of Defense (DoD) contracts for "Lockheed Martin Corporation" from the "Top 100 Contractors Report" of the Federal Procurement Data System, as of April 7, 2023.
Includes the most recent available data for "dollars obligated" reported for FY 2021 for all Department of Defense (DoD) contracts for "The Boeing Company" from the "Top 100 Contractors Report" of the Federal Procurement Data System, as of April 7, 2023.
To estimate how much each state, county, city and congressional district contributes to each of the federal programs above, NPP assigns each geography a percentage that represents the area’s share of the total U.S. income tax bill.
To assign the state percentages, we use state-level data from the IRS’s Individual Master File System. Specifically, Historic Table 2: Individual Income and Tax Data, by State and Size of Adjusted Gross Income, Tax Year 2012: http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Historic-Table-2 [i].
To get the percentage for each state, we divide its Income tax amount by the US Income tax amount [ii].
Zip code tabulation areas (ZCTAs) are the Census Bureau’s version of postal service zip codes. The basis for all sub-state multipliers is ZCTA rather than the USPS zip code, because ZCTAs can be allocated to other geographic areas of interest, such as congressional districts and counties.
To determine the percentage of total federal individual income tax contributed by each ZCTA, we start with Individual Income Tax ZIP Code Data compiled by the IRS: http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Individual-Income-Tax-Statistics-ZIP-Code-Data-(SOI) [iii]. We use tax year 2012 numbers.
To get the percentage of total taxes paid for each ZCTA, we do the following:
The Individual Income Tax ZIP Code Data is also the basis for the county, place, and congressional district taxes paid. To get those numbers, we follow steps 1 and 2 above. Then we match the ZCTAs with county, place, and 113th congressional district boundaries using the Missouri Census Data Center’s MABLE Geographic Correspondence Engine with Census 2010 Geography .
MABLE maps each ZCTA to a county or counties. Separate downloads do the same thing for places and congressional districts. When a ZCTA covers more than one county, place, or congressional district, MABLE provides an allocation to describe how much of the ZCTA belongs to each. This allocation is Census 2010 population-based.
For example, consider ZCTA 19317 in Pennsylvania. According to MABLE, 45% of the 19317 population live in Chester County, and 55% live in Delaware. Therefore, when determining the income taxes paid for each county, 45% of the 19317 amount will be assigned to Chester, and 55% will be assigned to Delaware.
Once we have the allocations from MABLE, we do the following calculations three times—once each for counties, places, and congressional districts.
We get the yearly costs of the trade-offs from the following sources.
Adults receiving low-income healthcare for one year is based on Medicaid spending per full-benefit enrollee for adults, generally people age 19 to 64, analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) based on data from the Preliminary CY 2023 Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS). The data year is 2023, adjusted to 2025 dollars.
The cost of students receiving federal student loan forgiveness is based on the average federal loan burden per borrower in each state, sourced from the U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Federal Student Loan Portfolio. We assume full, one-time forgiveness of the entire loan burden for each borrower. The data year is 2025.
Children receiving low-income healthcare for one year is based on Medicaid spending per full-benefit enrollee for children, generally people age 18 and younger, analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) based on data from the Preliminary CY 2023 Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS). The data year is 2023, adjusted to 2025 dollars.
Teacher salary information comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. The average annual compensation of an elementary school teacher (SOC code 252021) for each state is inflated by an additional 40% to approximate the cost of things like health insurance and pension contributions by their employer. The data year is 2024, adjusted to 2025 dollars.
Firefighter salary information comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. The average annual compensation of a firefighter (SOC code 33-2011) for each state is inflated by an additional 40% to approximate the cost of things like health insurance and pension contributions by their employer. The data year is 2024, adjusted to 2025 dollars.
Head Start promotes school readiness for children in low-income families by offering educational, nutritional, health, social, and other services. Head Start slot costs are calculated by dividing the total federal Head Start funding in each state by the total number of funded enrollments. The data are for fiscal year 2024 (adjusted to 2025 dollars) and come from the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center of the Administration for Children and Families.
Households powered by solar photovoltaic energy are calculated by taking the average monthly kilowatt hour usage of households in each state from the Energy Information Administration (Summary Table 5.a, 2024 Residential average monthly bill by Census Division, and State), multiplying by 12 to get annual average usage, and multiplying by the cost of solar photovoltaic energy from the Levelized Costs of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2025 (downloadable Excel file), for Total System LCOE for solar, standalone. The unsubsidized cost of solar energy is $51.15 per megawatt-hour. The data year is 2025.
The annual living wage salary is calculated using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) living wage calculator for a single parent with two children in each state. A living wage is defined as what one full-time worker must earn on an hourly basis to cover the cost of their family’s minimum basic needs where they live. The data year is 2025.
The average cost to provide military veterans with Veterans Affairs (VA) medical care is based on the state's total VA medical care expenditures divided by the state's total number of unique patients based on data from the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics. Medical Care expenditures include dollars for medical services, medical administration, facility maintenance, educational support, research support, and other overhead items. Medical Care expenditures do not include dollars for construction or other non-medical support. In FY 2024, the VA changed their methodology and no longer publishes the number of unique patients per state. The data year is 2023 (adjusted to 2025 dollars), the most recent year both patient and expenditure data is available.
Paid parental leave is based on the average salary for all occupations for each state sourced from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This does not include self-employed workers. We assume the benefit would be three months' salary or 25% of annual salary, not including benefits. This methodology is based on the Federal Paid Leave benefit that provides 12 weeks of paid parental leave (PPL) in place of FMLA leave time for all federal employees. The data year is 2024, adjusted to 2025 dollars.
The cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits per person are from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National and/or State Level Monthly and/or Annual Data. We calculate an annual cost by taking the total monthly cost per person, and multiplying by twelve. The data year is FY 2024, adjusted for FY 2025 using the average USDA-determined maximum benefit across all household sizes for FY 2024 and FY 2025. Hawaii and Alaska have different benefit maximums than the other states and are calculated accordingly.
Assistance provided under the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs falls into three categories: public housing, tenant-based, and privately owned, project-based (Section 8). HUD's data on Assisted Housing: National and Local includes a cost average for spending per month per unit across all HUD programs. This data is for the “Public Housing” program for the year 2024, based on the 2020 census. The spending per month data is available for the U.S. Total and by State. The trade-off cost for one year is calculated by multiplying the monthly costs by twelve months. Average spending per month across all public housing units in the United States is $714, which is $8,755 for one year (adjusted to 2025 dollars).
Registered nurse salary information comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. The average annual compensation of a registered nurse (SOC code 29-1141) for each state is inflated by an additional 40% to approximate the cost of things like health insurance and pension contributions by their employer. The data year is 2024, adjusted to 2025 dollars.
The scholarship figures come from the average cost for an in-state student's tuition and fees (excluding room and board) at a 4-year public university for the 2022-2023 academic year. The data are obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics Digest of Education Statistics (Table 330.20) and has been adjusted to 2025 dollars.
i This site uses income tax numbers to approximate each locality's contribution to the designated programs, which are funded by federal funds.
ii Income tax amount reflects income taxes owed after the deduction of non-refundable credits. The amount has not been reflected to adjust for the earned income credit or for refundable credits such as the health coverage credit, and additional child tax credit. A complete list of these refundable credits is on the payments section of the 1040.
iii To protect individual identities, some returns and zip codes are excluded from IRS zip code-level reports. See the IRS documentation for details (MS Word doc).
iv For the few ZCTAs that contain two states, we assign the ZCTA to the state that contains most of its population. This assignment doesn’t change the trade-offs calculations—if affects only how the user would search for that ZCTA/”city”.
