Welcome

Welcome to National Priorities Project's Federal Priorities Database.

We hope this interactive tool will help you connect the dots between your tax dollars, the federal budget, and programs or services in your own community. The federal budget is our budget – funded primarily through our tax dollars – and NPP believes all Americans should have access to information about how our taxes are invested back into our communities.

This easy-to-use tool allows you to go deeper into the local side of the budget timeline, budget analysis, and breaking news on nationalpriorities.org. Here you can see how federal program dollars flow to your state and county and also look up corresponding indicators – such as health insurance coverage, poverty rates, and school district stats – to see the impact of those dollars.

If this is your first time using the Federal Priorities Database, take a quick tour. And if you have any feedback or questions, please get in touch with NPP's research team.

Finally, you may also want to visit NPP's other interactive budget tools:

  • Your Tax Receipt: How did the government spend your federal income tax dollars?
  • Trade-Offs: Estimate how much your state, city, congressional district, or county paid towards programs and choose what you would provide instead.
  • Build a Better Budget: Build your own budget and share your revenue and spending priorities with Congress.

New for 2013

In 2013, NPP updated our database with new data from USASpending.gov. This is currently the only government-provided source of localized, program-level data about federal spending.

Although USASpending.gov is publicly available, it provides only raw data that have not been curated or collated into similar spending categories. The data are extensive and multi-layered, which makes USASpending useful for data wonks like us, but less so for the average citizen.

NPP's database takes the raw data from USASpending and makes it relevant and accessible by:

  • Providing maps and tables that show county-level spending in a visually-accessible way
  • Allowing users to adjust for inflation and compare data year over year
  • Displaying per-capita spending in addition to total spending, allowing for comparisons between states and counties
  • Providing downloadable spreadsheets and exports

NPP also offers the ability to display a map of your individualized search results on your own website using our quick-embed tool. We hope you will use this function to share what you learn about federal spending in your community.