Trump's Presidency Has Seen Federal Spending Go Up So Far

DOGE's widely publicized cuts failed to prevent more of the same

- JUSTIN FOX

Amid the layoffs, cancelled programmes 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 21 January 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 not really spending.

Some high-profile cutbacks show up as sharp spending declines at the Department of Education and the US Agency for International Development. Others don't because the affected agencies are folded into larger departments, as with the $1.2 billion, 7.7% decline in spending at the National Institutes of Health, which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services.