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Spending Decomposition

In progress draft, numbers subject to change.

An attempt to decompose the change in federal non-interest spending, over a window whose start year you choose, into two broad categories: stance, which reflects the government doing more, like paying larger benefits or supporting more carrier groups, and conditions, which covers all the reasons the cost of continuing the same stance can change, including population growth, price increases and other economic developments.

Three deep dives

Every line in the exhibit sits on a pile of sources, judgment calls and arithmetic. These three are written up in full, as illustrations of the range of sources, numbers and considerations behind a single number. Each opens on its own page.

Veterans' compensation: legislation versus administrationHow a +0.5 rise in stance was split between three statutes and twenty-five years of rulemaking and claims practice, from CBO's PACT Act score, VA's dashboards and the Annual Benefits Reports. Medicare provider payments: zero, the full CBO score, or in betweenWhether fee updates below input-cost growth are a cut, why the exhibit measures them from outcomes rather than scores, and what each of the three answers asserts. Defense: constant capability or constant forceThe two benchmarks for "the same defense," the Green Book deflators behind one and CBO's cost-of-a-constant-force wedge behind the other, and why the gap between them is the finding.

Program by program

In the order of the Results table. For each line: how it is built, the settings that touch it, the dated events inside the window, and the priced components of its stance figure. Numbers are at the default settings unless a setting is named, in percentage points of GDP.