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Federal Spending
About This Indicator
What Is Federal Spending?
Everything the federal government spends, at an annual rate in current dollars, quarterly since 1959, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. It includes aid to states, like Medicaid's federal share, but not what states and cities spend from their own taxes.
Why Does It Matter?
It is the Social Security check, the Medicare claim, and the soldier's paycheck. Some of it moves on its own: jobless benefits and food aid rise in a recession before Congress votes, reaching households just as their incomes fall.
Can Politics Influence It?
More than almost any other series here, but much of it runs on decades-old laws, so each new Congress inherits a large share of the budget before it votes.
Key Idea
In dollars it rises almost regardless of who governs, pushed by prices, population, and benefit formulas. Its dips from 2011 to 2013 and in 2021 and 2022 each followed a crisis as emergency spending ran out: a falling line can mean a crisis passed, not only a budget cut.
Not Scored
Source: BEA. NIPA Table 3.2 (W019RC).
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