Series
The Federal Dollars Series
The Federal Dollars Series follows the federal dollar of fiscal year 2025 — $9.8 trillion gross — from the tax or the bond that raised it, through the budget function and the account that carried it, to the kind of payment it became, the person or firm or government that received it, and the state it landed in, then back twelve years to see what moved. The studies that follow take up what the dollar pays for and what it costs: the federal workforce, war, the debt, a promised $5,000 check, the interest bill, and the money a president can move without a new act of Congress. Each study stands alone and carries its source and method in the same block as every figure; read in order, they are one account.
Study IV
Every Federal Dollar
Where $7.01 trillion came from and went in fiscal year 2025, down to the account.
Study V · Part One
Every Federal Dollar, Mapped
Down to the account and back up: 1,312 accounts, and $1,300B of apparent spending that is the government paying itself.
Study V · Part Two
Who Pays and Who Gets
The same $9.8 trillion turned four ways: what it was for, who paid it in, who got it back, and the whole ledger left to right.
Study V · Part Three
Federal Dollars by State, Over Time
Into the states, fiscal 2014 to 2025, and the $1.16 trillion of Medicare that the award records place in the states of the entities CMS pays, not where patients live.
Study V · Plate XVII
The Federal Ledger
The whole ledger on one page: every column sums to $9,811.5 billion, and any dollar can be traced from a tax to a recipient or back.
Study VIII
Every Federal Job
Who is on the payroll: the federal civilian jobs gone since January 2025, nationally and in Washington, Maryland and Virginia.
Study IX
Every Dollar of War
Defense and veterans, traced from 1940 to fiscal 2025, when national defense took $916.1 billion.
Study X
The Debt, the Waste and the Tax
What is borrowed, what is lost, and who pays: the debt since 1790.
Study XI
Five Thousand Dollars Each
What a new promise costs once it is borrowed: $1.60 trillion for a $5,000 check to every citizen, and $56B a year in interest.
Study XII
The Interest Bill
What the borrowing costs every year, $970B of net interest in fiscal 2025, and the levers that would slow it.