How We Got The Data For Usgovernmentspendingcom

THE government spending tables on this site aggregate all government spending in the United States of America by fiscal year organized by government function.

Most of the data is actual government spending as reported by the Office of Management and Budget or the United States Census Bureau. But there is also interpolated data for the years not covered by the data sources. In addition, we have included budgeted and estimated spending as well. We have used color and italics to tell you the source of each item of spending.

Here is the key:

Actual reported government spending is shown in blue text
Interpolated data filling in for missing years in the source records
is shown in blue italic text
Budgeted spending is shown in normal text
Estimated spending is shown in italic text
“Guesstimated” spending, i.e. future state and local spending projected by usgovernmentspending.com, is shown in red italic text

You can use controls on the table to change the year or to drill down to view more detailed spending information.

Data Sources

The government spending information is obtained from several sources of data.

Federal spending between 1962 and 2012 is obtained from a spreadsheet file Table 3.2 — Outlays by Function and Subfunction: 1962–2010 in Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2008 published by the Executive Office of the President of the United States. It contains actual historical federal government spending from 1962 to 2006, and budgeted and estimated spending from 2007 through 2010.

State and local government spending from 1992 to 2005 is obtained from tables of state and local government spending published annually by the United States Census Bureau. For instance, the data for fiscal year 2004 is available as a zip file: State by Level of Government - Comma Delimited.

State and local government spending from 1962 to 1991 is obtained from tables of state and local government spending in the Statistical Abstract of the United States published by the United States Census Bureau.

Federal, state, and local government spending prior to 1962 is obtained from “Series Y 605-637. Federal Government Expenditure, by Function: 1902 to 1970” and from “Series Y 682-709. State and Local Government Expenditure, by Function: 1902 to 1970.” These are tables included in Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 published by the United States Census Bureau.

This information is given in tabular form in Government Spending Data: Sources.

Guesstimated Spending

The federal government provides budgetary data for the current year and the next year. It also provides estimated budgetary data for the following four years.

But the Census Bureau data on state and local spending is historical data only. It does not include any information on state and local budgets or on state and local government spending projections.

So at usgovernmentspending.com we have massaged the recent historical data to come up with a “guesstimate” of future state and local spending.

The method used is to take the average change in spending for the last four years of historical data and estimate the percentage change in spending that this represents, limiting the percentage change to plus 20 percent and zero. We then apply that percentage for each year after the last year in the Census Bureau data.

You will notice that this method has its problems. The line “All Other Spending” for states goes negative in the out years, because the rate of increase in individual programs presently exceeds the rate of increase in overall spending. That is what you call a “budget crisis.”

Interpolated Spending

There is published data available from government sources for all years from 1952 to the present. Between 1932 and 1950 the data in “Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970” is tabulated only for even numbered years. Before 1932 there is data given only for 1902, 1913, 1922, and 1927. For the missing years we have interpolated data from the information given in the published years.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Government Expenditure

The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Democratic Capitalism

Three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism