An interactive visualization of federal government revenue and spending from 1962 to the present.
This data comes from the Congressional Budget Office Budget and Economic Data page. While CBO often makes projections of the future and those projections may be controversial, the data in this visualization is historical.
CBO presents this data in current dollars and as a percent of gross domestic product, or GDP. When current dollars are adjusted to account for inflation, the result is “real dollars.” In this visualization, I have used the CPI to convert current dollars to the value of dollars in 2019.
CBO also presents data as a percentage of gross domestic product. This is a measure of the portion of our national income that is spent as outlays or taxed as revenue.
Click here to learn more about the data and access this visualization.
