How much does the federal government spend?
The federal government obligated $4.8 trillion on federal awards in fiscal year 2026, and the Treasury reports $6.8 trillion paid out so far in the same year. Both are official answers to the question and they are not the same number. Exactly, $4,777,270,848,555 obligated.
Answer current as of
Federal obligations excluding insurance rose from $2.0 trillion in FY2008 to $4.8 trillion in FY2026
Two lines, because one would mislead. The upper line is every award type. The lower one takes out insurance — award type 09, which is face value like a loan guarantee rather than money paid. The publisher reported $1.4 trillion of it in FY2013 and $8.7 billion in FY2014, so the upper line falls by about a third at that point. That is a change in what is reported, not a fall in federal spending: the lower line, which is comparable across the whole period, does not fall.
The dashed line marks the change in insurance reporting after FY2013. A step in the upper line there is a change in what the publisher counts, not in what the government spent.
FY2026 is a partial year: it holds the obligations recorded so far, not a full twelve months, so the last point is not comparable with the ones before it.
U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service — USAspending API v2
The figures behind this chart
| Fiscal year | All award types | Excluding insurance | Agencies reporting |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | $2,044,905,796,392 | $2,038,588,482,581 | 64 |
| 2009 | $2,938,454,289,850 | $2,494,429,356,076 | 65 |
| 2010 | $2,491,533,308,869 | $2,253,707,629,150 | 67 |
| 2011 | $3,313,616,675,627 | $2,040,235,547,076 | 65 |
| 2012 | $3,857,275,766,571 | $2,585,192,008,289 | 68 |
| 2013 | $3,968,139,217,968 | $2,604,958,237,755 | 69 |
| 2014 | $2,786,603,234,600 | $2,777,858,767,427 | 68 |
| 2015 | $2,940,708,910,090 | $2,934,146,259,479 | 68 |
| 2016 | $3,141,056,985,447 | $3,134,347,267,989 | 70 |
| 2017 | $3,250,565,652,104 | $3,239,015,031,807 | 71 |
| 2018 | $3,376,818,254,932 | $3,360,148,525,643 | 72 |
| 2019 | $3,548,361,737,411 | $3,539,902,519,742 | 72 |
| 2020 | $4,995,548,580,494 | $4,984,351,071,982 | 73 |
| 2021 | $5,298,567,417,658 | $5,285,481,540,181 | 73 |
| 2022 | $4,598,658,827,046 | $4,571,373,161,648 | 73 |
| 2023 | $4,817,473,229,498 | $4,798,107,804,727 | 73 |
| 2024 | $4,931,558,125,734 | $4,924,395,457,748 | 73 |
| 2025 | $5,300,921,147,492 | $5,292,196,280,674 | 73 |
| 2026 | $4,777,270,848,555 | $4,771,530,665,852 | 73 |
Where this comes from
The figure is the result of a checked-in query, hub_totals.sql, run against the published data. Every number on this page can be traced to it.