Tracking federal expenditures in real time

This tool will update daily shortly after 4 p.m. ET on weekdays, excluding federal holidays, for daily data from the Daily Treasury Statements. Weekend and holiday transactions accumulate to the next business day. Weekly data (totaled from the daily data) will update once the previous full week’s data are complete. Monthly data are updated once a month, shortly after the Monthly Treasury Statements are released on the eighth business day. The vertical dashed line indicates President Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Totals are the sum of outlay categories, excluding Public Debt Cash Redemptions.

The Trump administration’s conduct and statements with regard to spending freezes and impoundment, including the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) activities, have created uncertainty as to whether or not funding is flowing through Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service to particular programs, agencies, and departments in accordance with the law. 

This data tool allows users to track the flow of federal funds in real time. It shows actual daily, weekly, monthly, and annual processed outlays to key programs and departments, as well as to states, Congress, and the Judiciary. This tool only reports outlays of federal funds, meaning the actual transmission of funds from the federal government to another entity.  

This tool makes few to no adjustments to the data, meaning that cyclical, seasonal, idiosyncratic, and expected variation in patterns of outlays over time remain. Because this tool only reports outlays, one cannot discern directly whether there is a gap between obligated funds and their outlay. Furthermore, if federal agencies have changed the rate at which they are newly obligating funds (e.g., by declining to sign new contracts), those changes would only gradually be reflected in outlays.  

These data are downloadable and can be used for secondary analysis. 

Step one: Select “Compare by year,” “Outlays over time (daily data),” or “Outlays over time (monthly data)” 

“Compare by year” tab  

With the “Compare by year” tab, you can select one outlay recipient at a time to observe how year-to-date outlays (either as a daily time series or cumulative) compare to patterns in prior years. While the tool defaults to comparing 2025 to 2024, users can change which years are shown using the “Select years:” box. Note that, in the cumulative data, we exclude years that do not have data starting in January. This feature is currently available for “daily data” only. 

The below examples from the “Compare outlays by year” tab show outlays to USAID by “Time series” (above) and “Cumulative year-to-date” (below). 

“Outlays over time (daily data)” and “Outlays over time (monthly data)” tabs

With the “Outlays over time” tabs, you can select your desired time period, outlay frequency, and outlay recipients. The “Outlays over time (daily data)” tab has high frequency data for a more-limited set of outlay recipients. The “Outlays over time (monthly data)” tab has lower frequency data for an extensive set of outlay recipients. In these tabs, you can compare up to nine outlay recipients using the “Select outlay recipients” box. 

In the daily tab, you can select three months, one year, or three years for the time period, and daily, weekly, or a seven-day simple moving average for the outlay frequency. The below example from the “Outlays over time (daily data)” tab shows outlays to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the past year. 

In the monthly tab, you can select one year or three years for the time period. The below example shows monthly outlays to International Assistance Programs (23), USAID (23.4), and Development Assistance Program (23.4.1) over the past year. 

Step two: Select outlay recipient(s)

Once a tab is selected, one can select or search for outlay recipients using the “Select outlay recipient(s)” bar. Labels for the outlay recipients in this tool have been edited for clarity and consistency over time and may not directly match those found on the Daily or Monthly Treasury Statements. The glossary lists the names of the outlay line items available in the tool, abbreviated (both as reported in the Daily or Monthly Treasury Statements and in this tool) and in full. 

To use the “Compare by year” tool, select one outlay recipient at a time. Not every outlay recipient is present for the entire time series. If a particular outlay recipient is not present in 2025, then the “Compare outlays by year” tab will not populate. This tab is currently limited to outlay recipients shown in the Daily Treasury Statements.  

To use the “Outlays over time (daily data)” tool, select up to nine recipients (which can include programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP], agencies like the National Institutes of Health [NIH], and other recipients of federal funding). 

To use the “Outlays over time (monthly data)” tool, select up the nine recipients by searching for an outlay recipient or by using the drop-down menu. The monthly outlay recipients are labeled with numerical prefixes to retain the nested structure of the Monthly Treasury Statement. Top level categories (for example, the Legislative Branch or the Department of Commerce) are designated with a single number (1–32), and each nested subcategory is designated with a decimal. For example, one top level category is “10 Department of Housing and Urban Development.” The first nested categories under housing programs include “10.1 Public and Indian Housing Programs,” “10.2 Community Planning and Development,” and several others. To go another level down, under “10.1 Public and Indian Housing Programs,” you can find “10.1.1 Tenant Based Rental Assistance,” “10.1.2 Housing Certificate Fund,” and several others. Totals for each category are calculated from each of its subcategories.  

Note that we have taken these numbers and names directly from the Monthly Treasury Statement data, and as such, certain numerical labels for outlay recipients change over time; this happens when new outlay recipients are added. For example, in the Monthly Treasury Statement data, “Federal Direct Student Loans” is line item 6.7.3 in some months and 6.7.4 in others. We are working to make these labels consistent over time and will add a glossary for the monthly data in the coming weeks. 

This tool was developed by Lauren Bauer, Noadia Steinmetz-Silber, and Riki Matsumoto. It is a work in progress; please contact Lauren Bauer ([email protected]) if you have questions or suggestions. For more information about the tool and its potential uses, listen to the Planet Money from NPR episode “The Big Government Money Pipe Freeze.”