Federal government
Federal budget by department
What every federal department actually paid out, from 1962 to the last closed fiscal year. The ranking is not the one most people expect, and the reason it isn't is the most useful thing on this page.
Source data last read . OMB publishes the historical tables once a year with the President's Budget; USAspending updates within the fiscal year.
Total federal outlays
$7.01 trillion
FY 2025
Money actually paid out, in current dollars. Not appropriations.
Largest department
Health and Human Services
$1.88 trillion
Almost all of it is Medicare and Medicaid, not departmental running costs.
Top five agencies
87.1%
Share of all federal outlays
Federal spending is far more concentrated than federal employment.
Since 2015
+89.9%
Total outlays, nominal
Nominal dollars — inflation is a large part of this figure.
Five agencies are most of the federal budget
Federal spending is not spread thinly across hundreds of agencies. In FY 2025 the five largest budget units accounted for 87.1% of all federal outlays, and the top three alone for 69.4%. Everything else — every regulatory agency, every science budget, all of foreign aid, the whole of the legislative and judicial branches — divides what is left.
The reason is that most federal spending is not the government doing things. It is the government moving money: benefits to individuals, grants to states, and interest to bondholders. Those flows need very few employees relative to their size, which is why the spending ranking and the staffing ranking look almost nothing alike.
Federal spending since 1962
Total outlays have gone from $106.8 billion in FY 1962 to $7.01 trillion in FY 2025. That is a nominal comparison across 63 years and it substantially overstates the real change, because a 1962 dollar and a 2025 dollar are not the same thing. OMB publishes these figures in current dollars and we do not convert them, because converting would mean picking a deflator and silently attributing our choice to OMB.
Hover or focus the chart and use the arrow keys to read any year.
The two vertical moves in that line are the 2008–09 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic response, and neither returned fully to the prior trend afterwards. The dashed section at the right is the Budget’s own projection, not a published actual, and should be read as the administration’s plan rather than as data.
Every federal agency, ranked by spending
These are the budget units OMB reports in Table 4.1 — the full set, in FY 2025. Where an agency has a page of its own, its name links to its full spending history back to 1962.
| Agency or budget unit | Outlays, FY 2025 | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Health and Human Services | $1.88 trillion | 26.9% |
| Social Security Administration (Off-Budget) | $1.52 trillion | 21.7% |
| Department of the Treasury | $1.46 trillion | 20.8% |
| Department of Defense--Military Programs | $868.4 billion | 12.4% |
| Department of Veterans Affairs | $376.6 billion | 5.4% |
| Department of Agriculture | $227.5 billion | 3.2% |
| Office of Personnel Management | $128.2 billion | 1.8% |
| Department of Transportation | $127.6 billion | 1.8% |
| Social Security Administration (On-Budget) | $125.6 billion | 1.8% |
| Department of Homeland Security | $115.3 billion | 1.6% |
| Other Defense--Civil Programs | $76.5 billion | 1.1% |
| Department of Energy | $52.3 billion | 0.7% |
| Department of Housing and Urban Development | $50.5 billion | 0.7% |
| Department of Labor | $50.4 billion | 0.7% |
| Department of Justice | $44.9 billion | 0.6% |
| Environmental Protection Agency | $37.0 billion | 0.5% |
| Department of Education | $34.7 billion | 0.5% |
| Department of Commerce | $29.7 billion | 0.4% |
| Department of State | $28.4 billion | 0.4% |
| National Aeronautics and Space Administration | $24.6 billion | 0.4% |
| Department of the Interior | $22.4 billion | 0.3% |
| International Assistance Programs | $17.3 billion | 0.2% |
| Corps of Engineers--Civil Works | $12.1 billion | 0.2% |
| National Science Foundation | $10.0 billion | 0.1% |
| Judicial Branch | $9.8 billion | 0.1% |
| Legislative Branch | $7.2 billion | 0.1% |
| Other Independent Agencies (Off-Budget) | $5.1 billion | 0.1% |
| Other Independent Agencies (On-Budget) | $2.8 billion | <0.1% |
| Small Business Administration | $837 million | <0.1% |
| General Services Administration | -$379 million | <0.1% |
| Executive Office of the President | -$506 million | <0.1% |
This fiscal year, so far
The table above ends at the last closed fiscal year, because that is when OMB publishes. For the year in progress there is a different source: agencies report budgetary resources, obligations and outlays to USAspending.gov continuously under the DATA Act. Those figures are current, and they are partial by definition — a fiscal year that has not ended cannot have a final number.
| Agency | Budgetary resources | Obligated | Outlayed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Department of Health and Human Services | $3.65 trillion | $2.67 trillion | $2.51 trillion |
| Department of the Treasury | $3.53 trillion | $1.85 trillion | $1.85 trillion |
| Department of Defense | $2.63 trillion | $1.43 trillion | $1.27 trillion |
| Social Security Administration | $1.58 trillion | $1.53 trillion | $1.52 trillion |
| Department of Homeland Security | $646.2 billion | $356.4 billion | $234.0 billion |
| Department of Veterans Affairs | $525.6 billion | $371.1 billion | $382.6 billion |
| Department of Agriculture | $478.8 billion | $207.8 billion | $202.9 billion |
| Office of Personnel Management | $380.8 billion | $183.3 billion | $182.9 billion |
| Department of Housing and Urban Development | $338.8 billion | $74.5 billion | $72.6 billion |
| Department of Transportation | $302.8 billion | $114.4 billion | $112.7 billion |
| Department of Energy | $139.5 billion | $63.7 billion | $56.6 billion |
| Department of State | $95.4 billion | $30.2 billion | $35.2 billion |
How to read a federal spending figure
Three distinctions account for most of the confusion around these numbers, and all three matter more than the numbers themselves.
Outlays are not appropriations. An appropriation is permission to spend; an outlay is money that actually left the Treasury in that year. Multi-year projects appropriate in one year and outlay across several, so the two figures for the same programme can differ enormously and both be right.
Gross is not net. Several rows here are reported net of the receipts the agency collects. That is why one line in the table is a large negative number, and why the rows sum to the total only when those adjustment lines are included.
Nominal is not real. Nothing here is inflation-adjusted. Over a decade that matters; over the 63 years this table covers it dominates. Long-run comparisons on this page are about what share of the budget went where, which is inflation-neutral, rather than about how much more the government spends in real terms.
Common questions
How much does the federal government spend in a year?
$7.01 trillion in FY 2025, the last completed fiscal year in the OMB historical tables. That is outlays — money actually paid out — rather than appropriations, and it is in nominal dollars, not adjusted for inflation.
Which federal agency spends the most?
Department of Health and Human Services, at $1.88 trillion in FY 2025 — 26.9% of all federal outlays. It spends the most because Medicare and Medicaid run through it, not because of the size of the department itself.
Do the agency budgets add up to the total?
Yes, exactly. The agency rows plus two adjustment lines — allowances and undistributed offsetting receipts — reconcile to the printed total for every year in the table. We check that on every sync and refuse the data if it fails, which is how a misread column would be caught before it reached this page.
Is this adjusted for inflation?
No. Every dollar figure here is nominal — current dollars for the year shown, exactly as OMB publishes them. A long-run comparison in nominal dollars overstates real growth substantially, so treat the multi-decade figures as a picture of composition rather than of purchasing power.
Why is one agency showing negative spending?
Some rows are reported net of receipts. When an agency collects more in fees, loan repayments or asset sales than it pays out in a year, its net outlays are negative. That is a real accounting result, not an error, and it is why nothing on this page computes a percentage change from a negative base.
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.
Agency budgetary resources, obligations and outlays
USAspending.gov (Department of the Treasury)
- Covers
- FY 2026, reported to date
- Last read
- September 6, 2026
Reported by agencies under the DATA Act and updated within the fiscal year, so a current-year figure is partial by definition. Budgetary resources include unobligated balances carried in from prior years, which is why they exceed the year’s appropriation.
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