Federal spending, made legible

Where does your tax money actually go?

Every year the federal government spends more than 7 trillion dollars, over 20,000 dollars for every person in the country. Most of us cannot say where it goes past the first word. Defense. Medicare. Interest. Project 2x250 takes the spending data the government already publishes but buries, and turns it into numbers a taxpayer can actually read. We follow the money as far down as the public record allows, and when the trail goes cold, we say so plainly.

Our first tool

Ledger

Ledger opens on the whole federal budget, every function, real numbers straight from the Treasury. Pick a category and follow it down: the insurers who collect Medicare, the universities that receive NIH grants, the entities behind a line of spending. Where the trail ends, Ledger tells you why. A privacy wall, the structure of the payment, or simply a corner we have not itemized yet.

Open Ledger →
$39T+
national debt, updated from the Treasury daily
19
budget functions, each drilled to its lowest public grain
Every figure
traceable to a government file, no estimates dressed up as facts

How we work

Three rules, no exceptions

Straight from the source

Every number ties back to a government file: Treasury statements, USAspending awards, CMS releases. No estimates dressed up as facts, and nothing summarized away.

Honest about the limits

When the public record runs out, we mark the wall and name it. A privacy wall, a structural wall, or a gap we have not reached yet. You are never left guessing whether a number is the whole story.

For the taxpayer first

You paid for all of it. The goal is simple: let anyone check a claim about federal spending against the same records, without taking anyone's word for it. We do not tell you a dollar was wasted. We tell you where it went.

Follow a dollar that matters to you

Start at the top of the budget and go as deep as the record allows. Or read the work behind it, each piece traceable to its source.