About USA Spending
Making U.S. Government Spending Easier to Understand
USA Spending is an independent project and is not affiliated with, operated by, sponsored by, or endorsed by the U.S. Government, USAspending.gov, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, or any government agency.
1. Overview
USA Spending is an independent data visualization and research website that helps people explore publicly available U.S. government spending information through interactive charts, historical data, comparisons, and calculators.
Federal spending datasets released by government authorities contain vast amounts of financial detail spread across fiscal years, executive departments, award instruments, states, and prime recipients. Our platform organizes these complex datasets into intuitive, accessible visual explorer tools.
2. What Is USA Spending?
USA Spending is built to make public government spending information easier for citizens, researchers, journalists, and analysts to navigate. Official federal datasets contain trillions of dollars in obligations and outlays, but raw spreadsheets can be difficult to interpret.
We process official public API feeds—primarily from USAspending.gov—normalizing financial figures and presenting them with transparent fiscal-year context and mathematical rate models.
3. What Can Users Explore?
Explore overall federal outlays, budget totals, and daily spending velocity.
Understand how spending is distributed across defense, healthcare, social security, and education.
Inspect budget allocations for executive departments like DOD, HHS, and NASA.
Examine federal contracts and assistance associated with all 50 states and territories.
View prime contractors and organizations receiving federal contract and grant awards.
Convert massive trillion-dollar numbers into relatable time and per-resident rates.
4. Our Goal
Our goal is non-partisan and data-centric: we do not advocate for policy positions, political candidates, or specific budget decisions. Instead, we strive to make public financial data easier to discover, verify, and compare.
5. Data First Philosophy
- Official Sources: Primary reliance on official government API streams.
- Transparent Methodology: Explicit formulas for rates, percentages, and fiscal year baselines.
- Strict Terminology: Careful distinction between outlays, obligations, and state geographic allocations.
- No Fake Data: Production UI displays only verified data or clear unavailable notices.
6. Independent Project Notice
USA Spending is an independent project and is not affiliated with, operated by, sponsored by, or endorsed by the U.S. Government, USAspending.gov, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, or any government agency.