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Have a question about how It's Our Money works?

Government data

Federal spending data comes from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Historical Tables, which are publicly available and updated annually. Current-year figures are estimates because final actuals typically don't appear until the following budget cycle, roughly one to two years after the fact. Separately, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audits the Treasury-prepared consolidated financial statements and has consistently found material weaknesses, a useful reminder that federal financial data, across the board, carries inherent imprecision.

The priority sliders

On the priorities page, you're not dividing up a budget. You're expressing priorities, ie. how much you value each broad area of federal spending relative to your own sense of what matters. Each slider is independent. Moving one doesn't affect the others.

The five spending areas, Defense & Veterans, Economy & Development, Infrastructure & Environment, People & Society, and Science & Government, are It's Our Money's own groupings, not official government categories. They're an editorial aggregation of OMB function codes, designed to map onto how most people already think and talk about government spending, without requiring expertise in federal accounting.

The comparison

Your priorities and the government's spending don't share a unit of measurement, so the comparison screen normalizes both to the same scale before showing them side by side. The initial view expresses both as relative priorities — your slider positions and the government's spending distribution each translated into a comparable ranking.

If you move to the percentage comparison tab, you'll see both expressed as shares of total spending. Your priorities have been converted proportionally: a slider set high contributes a larger share, one set low contributes less. The tab includes a breakdown of how that conversion works.

The tax breakdown tab uses the same converted percentages to show what your allocation would mean in dollar terms, based on estimated federal tax contribution figures.

What this tool isn't

It's Our Money isn't a policy simulator. It doesn't model what would happen to specific programs if spending changed. It doesn't account for the distinctions between mandatory spending, discretionary spending, and net interest, or the difference between what Congress appropriates and what gets spent. The five spending categories are broad by design. More detail is available in the primary sources linked below.

Primary sources

• OMB Historical Tables
• OMB Circular A-11 Exhibit 79A (function code reference)
• GAO Consolidated Financial Audit Reports