The fall in federal spending that was a change of category
American Factbook Research
Figures as of
Federal obligations reported to USAspending fell between fiscal year 2013 and fiscal year 2014 from $3.97 trillion to $2.79 trillion — a change of -29.8%.
Federal spending did not fall by that much, or at all. Take one category out and the same two years run from $2.60 trillion to $2.78 trillion, a rise of 6.6%.
The category
USAspending groups awards by type. One of those types, which the publisher's own reference list calls Insurance, records the face value of federal insurance — the amount covered, in the way a loan guarantee records the amount guaranteed rather than money paid.
In fiscal year 2013 that category was $1.36 trillion, or 34.4% of every obligation the government reported that year. In fiscal year 2014 it was $8.7 billion.
The two largest years in the whole record are fiscal year 2013 at $1.36 trillion and fiscal year 2011 at $1.27 trillion. Every year since 2014 is a small fraction of either.
What the record shows, and what it does not
The record shows that the amount reported under this award type changed sharply between two consecutive years, and that the change is large enough to move the national total by that much on its own.
It does not show why. These are obligations as agencies submitted them, and a change in what is submitted can follow from a change in a program, in a reporting rule, in which agencies report, or in how an existing program is classified. The data distinguishes none of those, and this brief does not guess between them.
It also does not show that anything stopped. An insurance program that continues while its face value stops being reported under this award type looks exactly like this, and so does one that ends.
Why it matters for reading any total
A reader who plots total federal obligations across these years sees a cliff. The cliff is real in the data and it is not a fall in federal spending. Any figure that adds award types together carries this: the types are not equivalent quantities — the face value of insurance and the price of a contract are different kinds of number — and a total that mixes them inherits every change in how any one of them is reported.
That is why the Spending hub reports this category on its own rather than inside an unlabelled remainder, and why every chart that crosses these years draws the total beside the total without it.
What this cannot show
- USAspending reports obligations as agencies submitted them. It is not an audited financial statement and does not reconcile to one.
- Insurance figures are the face value of federal insurance, like the face value of a loan guarantee. They are not money paid out.
- This brief shows that the composition of what was reported changed. It does not establish why it changed, and nothing here should be read as a claim about a decision, a policy, or a program.
- The record begins at fiscal year 2008 because the publisher's search endpoints do not answer for earlier dates, not because federal spending began then.
Sources
- USAspending API v2, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service. U.S. Government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. 105). Retrieved 2026-09-19.
Every figure above is the recorded result of a query checked into the repository alongside this text. Continuous integration re-runs those queries and refuses the change if a number here and a number there disagree. Read the methodology, or the datasets behind it.
Published by American Factbook LLC. An independent publication.