DOGE Has Failed to Halt Increases in Federal Spending
Amid the layoffs, canceled programs and other cutbacks in Washington since Donald Trump moved back into the White House in January, one thing hasn't changed: Federal spending has just kept going up.
Spending since Jan. 21 is up 8.7% over the equivalent period in 2024, 7.2% over 2023. Some kinds of federal spending are irregular and intermittent, and any comparison like this can be affected by the timing of payments, but the Congressional Budget Office's latest monthly budget review made adjustments for timing shifts and estimated that spending in the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October, was up 7% through April over the same period a year earlier. The increase appears to be real.
What's driving it? The Daily Treasury Statement from which these numbers are derived breaks down what it calls 'withdrawals' into 102 categories, one of which — public debt cash redemptions — is excluded here because it's not really spending. 1 I've consolidated the other 101 here into cabinet departments plus a few agencies and programs with large spending changes relative to the equivalent period last year.
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