Data for the The President’s Fiscal Year 2016 Budget
From the webpage:
Each year, after the President’s State of the Union address, the Office of Management and Budget releases the Administration’s Budget, offering proposals on key priorities and newly announced initiatives. This year we are releasing all of the data included in the President’s Fiscal Year 2016 Budget in a machine-readable format here on GitHub. The Budget process should be a reflection of our values as a country, and we think it’s important that members of the public have as many tools at their disposal as possible to see what is in the President’s proposals. And, if they’re motivated to create their own visualizations or products from the data, they should have that chance as well.
You can see the full Budget on Medium.
About this Repository
This repository includes three data files that contain an extract of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) budget database. These files can be used to reproduce many of the totals published in the Budget and examine unpublished details below the levels of aggregation published in the Budget.
The user guide file contains detailed information about this data, its format, and its limitations. In addition, OMB provides additional data tables, explanations and other supporting documents in XLS format on its website.
Feedback and Issues
Please submit any feedback or comments on this data, or the Budget process here.
Before you start cheering too loudly, spend a few minutes with the User Guide. Not impenetrable but not an easy stroll either. I suspect the additional data tables, etc. are going to be necessary for interpretation of the main files.
Writing up how to use this data set would be a large but worthwhile undertaking.
A larger in scope but also worthwhile project would be to track how the initial allocations in the budget change through the legislative process. That is to know on a day to day basis, which departments, programs, etc. are up or down. Tied to votes in Congress and particular amendments that could prove to be very interesting.
Update: A tweet from Aaron Kirschenfeld directed us to: The U.S. Tax Code Is a Travesty by John Cassidy. Cassidy says to take a look at table S-9 in the numbers section under “Loophole closers.” The trick to the listed loopholes is that very few people qualify for the loophole. See Cassidy’s post for the details.
Other places that merit special attention?
Update: DHS Budget Justification 2016 (3906 pages, PDF). First saw this in a tweet by Dave Maass.