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Tea Party Fact Sheet

A usgovernmentspending.com brief by Christopher Chantrill

Government Spending since 1900

Chart S.03t: Total Spending as Percent GDP

Would you believe it? Back in 1902 the government spent only six percent of our national income for public use. That was for everything: defense, education, the Post Office. Today in 2016 the government takes almost 36 percent of our nation’s product. And for what?

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Government Debt since 1900

Chart D.13t: Total National Debt as Percent GDP

Used to be that the National Debt only went up to pay for wars. Then President Reagan increased the debt to win the Cold War. Now President Obama is increasing the debt to bail out the banks — and anyone else that needs a cool trillion or so.
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Decline of the Dollar

The federal government took control of the nation’s money supply in 1913. President Roosevelt cut the value of the dollar to get out of the Great Depression. President Nixon cut it again to get re-elected in 1972. Now the dollar is worth about 3 cents of the dollar in 1913. You decide how well the feds have done.

Welfare Spending. Destroying the low-income family

Chart S.33t: Welfare Spending Since 1965

The great achievement of government welfare programs is that now 40 percent of children are born out of wedlock and over 30 percent of children of high-school dropouts aren’t living with both parents.
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Education Spending. Dumbing us down

Chart 2.52: TEducation Spending by Government Level

Back in 1842 Horace Mann promised that public schools would cut the crime rate by 90 percent. That was when nearly all Americans were able to read. Today the government reckons that only 13 percent of adult Americans are “proficient” in literacy and numeracy. But government spending on education has never been higher.
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There’s More...

usgovernmentspending.com. Where you go to get facts about government.

Prepared by Christopher Chantrill.
email: chrischantrill@gmail.com

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State and Local Finances for 2023

On September 11, 2025 we updated the state and local spending and revenue for FY 2023 using the new Census Bureau State and Local Government Finances summaries for FY 2023 released on July 31, 2025. (See also Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances). The release includes state and local spending for the United States as a whole and the 50 individual states and the District of Columbia.

State and local spending and revenue for FY2023 are now actual historical spending as reported by the Census Bureau. In addition, the Census Bureau published updated tables for 2021 and 2022.

We have updated the "guesstimated" state and local finances for FY2024-30 as indicated in our "guesstimate" blog entries.

We have also updated data for individual local government units with data for 2023.

Beginning in 2022 the Census Bureau has changed the value for Line 56 Direct Expenditure and Line 7 General Revenue from own sources, as follows:

We have decided to end our publication of non-insurance trust cash and security holdings.

However, to keep the time series at usgovernmentspending.com consistent, we have decided to add insurance-trust values back into Line 56 and Line 7 values.