Federal agency
Legislative Branch
Congress and its support agencies — member and committee staff, the Capitol Police, the Library of Congress, the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office.
Source data last read . OMB publishes the historical tables once a year; USAspending updates within the fiscal year.
Outlays, FY 2025
$7.2 billion
Money actually paid out
Share of federal spending
0.1%
Of $7.01 trillion total
Rank by spending
25 of 26
Among agencies with a page here
Staff
Not reported
No OMB staffing column
OMB names only eight departments in its staffing table; the rest fall into a residual that cannot be split.
Spending history
Legislative Branch paid out $196 million in FY 1962 and $7.2 billion in FY 2025 — a 36.9-fold increase in nominal terms. These are current dollars, not adjusted for inflation, so across 63 years the nominal change substantially overstates the real one. The share-of-budget figure below is the inflation-neutral way to read the same series.
Hover or focus the chart and use the arrow keys to read any year.
Read as a share of the federal budget, the same series says something the nominal one cannot. A share is immune to inflation and to the growth of the budget itself, so it answers the question people usually mean when they ask whether an agency has grown: did it take a larger or smaller slice than it used to?
Hover or focus the chart and use the arrow keys to read any year.
The years that moved the line
A sixty-year spending chart is mostly gradual with a few sharp steps, and the steps are the interesting part. These are the largest single-year changes in Legislative Branch’s outlays, ranked by size in dollars rather than by percentage: the early years involve small enough numbers that a percentage ranking would surface nothing but the 1960s.
| Fiscal year | From | To | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | $5.8 billion | $4.6 billion | −$1.3 billion (−21.5%) |
| 2010 | $4.7 billion | $5.8 billion | +$1.1 billion (+24.1%) |
| 2023 | $5.8 billion | $6.5 billion | +$762 million (+13.3%) |
Decade by decade
Averaging each decade smooths out the single-year spikes and shows the level the agency actually settled at. Decades with fewer than five years of data are left out rather than averaged, because a three-year average sitting beside a ten-year one looks like the same statistic and is not.
| Decade | Average annual outlays | Years averaged |
|---|---|---|
| 1960s | $230 million | 8 |
| 1970s | $712 million | 10 |
| 1980s | $1.6 billion | 10 |
| 1990s | $2.4 billion | 10 |
| 2000s | $3.8 billion | 10 |
| 2010s | $4.6 billion | 10 |
| 2020s | $6.2 billion | 6 |
Year by year
| Fiscal year | Outlays | Share of federal spending |
|---|---|---|
| 2031 (est.) | $8.2 billion | 0.1% |
| 2030 (est.) | $8.2 billion | 0.1% |
| 2029 (est.) | $8.2 billion | 0.1% |
| 2028 (est.) | $8.1 billion | 0.1% |
| 2027 (est.) | $7.9 billion | 0.1% |
| 2026 (est.) | $8.5 billion | 0.1% |
| 2025 | $7.2 billion | 0.1% |
| 2024 | $6.8 billion | 0.1% |
| 2023 | $6.5 billion | 0.1% |
| 2022 | $5.8 billion | 0.1% |
| 2021 | $5.3 billion | 0.1% |
| 2020 | $5.4 billion | 0.1% |
| 2019 | $5.0 billion | 0.1% |
| 2018 | $4.7 billion | 0.1% |
| 2017 | $4.5 billion | 0.1% |
| 2016 | $4.3 billion | 0.1% |
| 2015 | $4.3 billion | 0.1% |
| 2014 | $4.2 billion | 0.1% |
| 2013 | $4.3 billion | 0.1% |
| 2012 | $4.4 billion | 0.1% |
| 2011 | $4.6 billion | 0.1% |
| 2010 | $5.8 billion | 0.2% |
| 2009 | $4.7 billion | 0.1% |
| 2008 | $4.4 billion | 0.1% |
| 2007 | $4.3 billion | 0.2% |
Common questions
What is the Legislative Branch's budget?
Legislative Branch paid out $7.2 billion in FY 2025, which was 0.1% of all federal spending that year. That is outlays — money actually paid out — rather than an appropriation, and it is in current dollars, not adjusted for inflation. The legislative branch is outside the executive branch, so its employees are counted in neither the OMB executive-branch staffing table nor any figure on this site described as "federal civilian employment".
How many people work at the Legislative Branch?
This page cannot say, and will not guess. OMB's staffing table names only eight departments individually and folds everything else into a residual column that cannot be broken apart, so the source behind this page carries no figure for this agency. Substituting one from elsewhere would mean presenting a number on a different basis as if it were on this one.
When did Legislative Branch spending change the most?
Its largest single-year move was FY 2011, when outlays went from $5.8 billion to $4.6 billion — a change of $1.3 billion (−21.5%).
Where does this data come from?
The spending series is OMB Historical Table 4.1, published annually with the President's Budget. Every figure is checked against the source table's own internal totals before it is published here; nothing is estimated or interpolated.
Sources and methods
Every figure on this page comes from one of the datasets below and nowhere else. Nothing is estimated, interpolated or carried over from a previous edition. Where two sources measure something similar, they are reported separately rather than combined, because they are not measuring the same thing.
Historical Table 4.1 — Outlays by Agency
Office of Management and Budget
- Covers
- FY 1962–2031
- Last read
- September 6, 2026
Outlays are money actually paid out in a fiscal year, in millions of current (nominal) dollars — not appropriations, and not adjusted for inflation. Some rows are net of offsetting receipts and can be negative.
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