THE FOLLOWING table specifies the source of government spending and revenue data for each range of years for which usgovernmentspending.com provides government spending data and usgovernmentrevenue.com provides government revenue data.
See below the table for additional information on sources.
See below the table for additional information on sources.
UPDATED: 04/20/24
| Year | Federal Spending and Revenue | Intergovernmental Transfer | State Spending and Revenue | Local Spending and Revenue |
| 2029 thru 2025 | budgeted From Historical Tables in latest Federal Budget, see here. | guesstimated by usgovernmentspending.com | ||
| 2024 thru 2022 | actual From Historical Tables in latest Federal Budget, see here. | guesstimated by usgovernmentspending.com | ||
| 2021 thru 1992 | actual From Historical Tables in latest Federal Budget, see here. | actual US Census Bureau State and Local Government Finances: See here. | ||
| 1991 thru 1971 | actual From Historical Tables in latest Federal Budget, see here. | actual US Census Bureau Statistical Abstract of the United States 1993, Table: 474 etc. | ||
| 1970 thru 1962 | actual From Historical Tables in latest Federal Budget, see here. | actual US Census Bureau Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 | ||
| 1961 thru 1952 | actual US Census Bureau Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 | |||
| 1951 thru 1902 | actual; and interpolated US Census Bureau Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 See also: World War II Spending and: World War I Spending | |||
| 1901 thru 1891 | actual US Census Bureau Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 | interpolated US Census Bureau Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 and Historical Statistics of the United States: 1789 - 1945 | ||
1890 | actual US Census Bureau Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 | actual Historical Statistics of the United States: 1789 - 1945 | ||
| 1889 thru 1820 | actual US Census Bureau Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 | interpolated Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume 2, p.363 | ||
| 1829 thru 1792 | actual US Census Bureau Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 | none | ||
Additional Sources
You can access the budgeted federal data prior to FY96 used in usgovernmentspending.com here:
- Historical Tables in pdf format for FY1991, FY1992, FY1993, FY1994, FY1995.
- Historical Tables in pdf format for Medicare Trustees Report
- Historical Tables in pdf format for Federal Finances 1789-1970
- Historical Tables in pdf format for State and Local Finances 1789-1945
- Historical Tables for FY1986-FY1990 from St Louis Fed. FRASER database.
Federal data prior to 1962 is extracted from “Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970.” You can download the relevant extracts in a pdf file here or from the Federal Reserve Archive here.
State and local data from 1902 to 1970 is extracted from the US Census Bureau’s “Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970.” You can download the relevant extracts in a pdf file here.
State and local data for 1890 is extracted from the US Census Bureau’s “Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789 - 1945.” You can download the relevant extracts in a pdf file here.
State and local data for 1891-1901 is interpolated from the 1902 Census Bureau data and the 1890 Census Bureau data.
State and local data for 1830-1889 is interpolated from decadal estimates in Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume 2, page 363.
Do you have the data for the states approved budgeted amount for FY2009 and FY2010? Please assist if you can. thanks
ReplyDeleteNo. The state budgets are all different and it would be too hard to align the "guesstimates" with individual state budgets.
ReplyDeleteThis page is called Table of Data SOURCES yet all I find here for sources are spreadsheets compiled by you. A source is the place from where you got the information you used in putting together the spreadsheets.
ReplyDeleteDo you have data on the breakdown of deficit spending for fiscal year 2011?
ReplyDeleteThis liberal would to like to see this breakdown. It's a shame our government does not provide this needed information. This administration just does not know how to support its cause. I to am developing spreadsheets of financial data and it is proving to be hard confusing work. We thank you...
DeleteI will second what Lidia said. What are the sources of your data? Anyone can throw some numbers on a spreadsheet, but listing where the original data comes from is an essential part of responsible reporting.
ReplyDeleteDear axy and Lidia,
DeleteIf you let your mouse hover over the links to the tables, such as "Table 2.1 (xls)" you can see the source web address in the bottom left hand corner of your browser. When you click on the "US Budget Historical Tables...(pdf)" it takes you to www.gpo.gov, the US Government Printing Office. The tables provided directly as excel spreadsheets match up to the tables presented in the US Budget pdf. Hope this helps clarify for everyone.
Sorry. I don't understand the question about sources. The links go to official government spreadsheets published by the federal government. For the state and local data from 1992 forward the sources are flat-files at the US Census Bureau. Those links are the sources for the numbers in my online database, except for the links to World War I and II spending, which describe how I mash up defense spending from incomplete government data.
ReplyDeleteIf you go to the Numbers page, which tabulates data for a specific year, you will find in the Notes at the bottom of the table links to the government data source for that data for that year.
Am I missing something?
I double checked the federal revenue and spending numbers presented in Chris' website against the actual numbers from the CBO website, and can report that Chris is spot-on.
ReplyDeleteChris doesn't make up data. All he does is assemble it into formats that are easier to read and more meaningful.
Thanks, Anonymous. You're a pal!
ReplyDelete--Chris
Excellent resource. Accuracy is doubted by those on the left because it conflicts with their narrative that the debt crisis is exaggerated and that government revenues are dropping due to the Bush tax cuts. It has been suggested to me that the charts are not accurate because this is a conservative site.
ReplyDeleteWJL
Accuracy is only doubted by those who see the author is a self-professed conservative. However, that doesn't mean he's wrong, either. Any intelligent person would appreciate the metrics regardless of political leaning as long as the data is presented faithfully and contextualized appropriately.
DeleteBesides, there's plenty in here to piss liberals off, too -- % gov't spending on military, for example (55%! -- a ridiculous proportion in my opinion).
I'm pretty liberal and I used this site for my college Technology course presentation...
DeleteDear Chris, I am much benifited by your data. Thank you. However, I have two questions.
ReplyDeleteFirst is about the state & local government amount. In the census data, the sum of state government amount and local government amount is NOT equal to the state & local government amount. This may be due to some statistical reason. But I find you just make the sum of state government amount and local government amount as the amount of state & local government. You can check the data of Total Revenue of Total Direct Rev for Alabama. In census data, the state & local government amount, state government amount and local government amount are 31.834billion, 18.353billion, and 20.312billion respectively. The sum of latter two is 38.665, which is the number you reported as "state & local government".
Second is about the GDP. You use the GDP data at http://measuringworth.com/. Why do you not use the data in BEA in current dollar value at http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls?
@anon
ReplyDelete1. It's true; you can't add state to local on the Total Revenue line. that's because Total Revenue includes monies from other governmental levels, so you get double counting. But my top line figure is "Total Direct Revenue" which is Total Revenue less intergovernmental revenue. And that should remove the double counting. You can, if you like, look at "state and local" combined by clicking the appropriate list control.
2. I use measuringworth.com for GDP because it goes back to the 18th century, and so does the data on federal spending. I want to be able to show spending and revenue as percent of GDP. The BEA numbers only go back to 1929.
Chris: This is an excellent website with lots of interesting information. The burgeoning national debt will soon sink the U.S. unless we get Congress to act now to reduce spending drastically. Several questions: 1) what is a good source for identifying current and historical federal employee compensation and benefits for purposes of comparing by job titles to private industry; 2) What is a good source for analyzing current and historical defense spending. Something that would show the components of defense spending by Fiscal Year. Thanks and keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteChris
ReplyDeleteThanks for a excellent resource for assimulating spending data without talking points. you have helped me to show a learned person how Welfare, health Care, and Federal Pensions out paced defense spending even during the G W Bush admin. Excellent Site
Using statistics out of context is misleading to say the least. If the debt is such a problem the why haven't yields on 10 year bonds gone up? Why when we were downgraded did investors jump from private debt to public debt?
ReplyDeletePaul Krugman explained this recently. High debt with a week currency like the Euro causes a lot of worry by bond buyers - so they want high rates. This was the case for Greece.
DeleteBut with a strong stable currency like the dollar or pound there is much less concern. So England has run debts over 100% of GDP for about 70 of the last 150 years - with no problem selling its bonds at low rates.
This is also the case for the US. We are at 100% of GDP and our interest rate on Treasury Bonds is so low that occasionally the buyers are paying us to loan money to us when you figure in the effect of inflation.
WJL - I am a so-called liberal and it would never occur to me to interpret Chris' excellent resource as an attack on or vindication of one or the other political party or left-right ideological orientation. But since you brought it up, it is Tea Party and like-minded Republicans who have been sounding the alarm on federal spending and deficit levels -- not progressives. I, for one, just want our system to operate as cost-efficiently as possible while meeting the needs of an aging and growing population. I think Chris summarized it best in his analysis: Today’s federal deficit always seems dangerous and unprecedented. In fact, you need a war to really get a big deficit. The peak deficits came during World War I (16% of GDP in 1919) and World War II (24% in 1945), as Chart 4 shows. The deficits of the Great Depression only came to about five percent of GDP, and the big $1.4 trillion deficit for FY 2009 amounted to 13% of GDP." So can we as a Nation finally invest in much-needed infrastructure maintenance and upgrades and finally get people back to work?
ReplyDeleteWhen was the "US Federal Debt by Year" last updated, I am using it for a research paper of mine, and I need to know this. Can you reply to, bsly1994@yahoo.com. Thank you for your time.
ReplyDeleteare these budgets in real or nominal dollars?
ReplyDeleteChristopher...help me figure something out...most Americans think that TARP and the Stimulus were "one time spending" deals to help the economy...however it appears that 2007 Federals spending was 2.7 Trillion, and 2008 (with TARP) was 3.0 Trillion....then 2009 (with Obama's Stimulus) was 3.5 Trillion...and spending has never come back down to where it was before TARP and the Stimulus.
ReplyDeleteCan this be interpreted this way...TARP and The Stimulus have become annual increases in expenditures?
Norquist's Cost of Government site says Federal spending is 88 days worth (24.0% of GDP)and State and Local is 40 days (works out to 10.9% of GDP) - for a total of 34.9% of GDP for 2012.
ReplyDeleteFor your site it would be 6.3 billion / 15 billion = 42% of GDP.
Why the difference?
Could you please provide an exact source for the GDP growth state-by-state? Also, I believe the 1997 growth rates have to be divided by 10.
ReplyDeleteFixed. I have converted pre-1997 real state GDP to 2005 dollars. See here. Email me to get your Amazon gift card for reporting a bug.
DeleteA bug?! Laughing. Thats not a bug. Its a mistake. Nice try.
DeleteIs there one file with all the data normalized by year, category, and numbers are only in one and only one place (no totals, subtotals, etc.), and each element is categorized. The kind of data that works very well into a pivot table? When it isn't possible to have all the break downs because it isn't tracked in years past, then a hierarchical data categorization (Revenue:Incometax,Reveue:Medicare:Employer,Revenue:Medicare:EMployee,Spending:Military,SPending:Entitlements:Title1) can be used.
ReplyDeleteChris: I really appreciate the time you took to put this excellent information up on here especially since i have to do a research paper on the deficit. This was an excellent source, really aprreciate it, and hope to see you keep up with the info. :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting information. In general I I think most of what you've shown here is pretty accurate, but I take issue with the chart on your revenue site comparing top 1% income as a share of GDP and taxes paid as a share of total taxes. You're comparing apples and oranges. A proper comparison of these two data points would show them both as a % of GDP.
ReplyDeleteThe data properly shown indicate that income as a share of GDP has grown MUCH faster than taxes as a share of GDP.
You are correct "The data properly shown indicate that income as a share of GDP has grown MUCH faster than taxes as a share of GDP."- but I disagree that most is accurate. Much of the comparisons on this site are designed to paint a biased picture- not to analyze data.
Delete"I double checked the federal revenue and spending numbers presented in Chris' website against the actual numbers from the CBO website, and can report that Chris is spot-on.
ReplyDeleteChris doesn't make up data. All he does is assemble it into formats that are easier to read and more meaningful."
Patently false. This website is the posterchild for antecedent bias and mathematical monkey business. Your guestimated figures are most certainly made-up and the you have cherry picked and adjusted top your liking many of the other comparisons.
I am trying to figure out what rate of national sales tax would it take to replace the revenue received from the personal tax, the corporate tax and the social insurance tax. Not too adept at this sort of thing. Can you help?
ReplyDeleteExcellent source to get started on analyzing trends in public finance over the last century. Make of it what you want -- a big thank you to Christopher Chantrill for making this available to the research community.
ReplyDeleteI am in the middle of a research paper at school and have been using some of the information on your site. In citing the information one bit of information that must be included is the "date published." I've looked extensively on your site of this date but don't seem to see it. Do you have a specific date in which you publish information or is this an ongoing thing. Any help you could give me would be super awesome. I for one am very grateful for your efforts in making this information available in this format. Looking over government spreadsheets is both time consuming and tedious.
ReplyDeleteI have a question about your data for State Spending. I would like to be able to use your data, as it seems super helpful. However I cannot seem to corroborate the number you provide with other sources, including the source cited on your website. This is by no means an accusation, I am just trying to figure out what is being reported under "spending," as state spending reporting is a little muddled, and what is included as spending can vary state by state, and there are several ways of classifying spending. If I knew what figure was being reported, then I would know if this is actually the data I am looking for.
ReplyDeleteAs an example, Massachusetts Total State Spending in 2000- the value (in millions of $) given by your website is $23,237. However when I go into the Census report that you ultimately link to ( http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/01statab/stlocgov.pdf -pg277 of the document, pg21 of the .pdf file) that value shows up nowhere in the document. They have a Total Expenditure $26,532, and a General Fund Expenditures $20,828, and that is the closest I can find.
If I am simply missing something, or looking in the wrong file please let me know.
Thank you.