govspends¶
Public-records investigations of government budgets, built in the open.
Each investigation answers plain questions about a government's budget (is it higher, why is there a shortfall, where does the money go, who got a raise) from the government's own documents, and shows its work: every figure is traceable to a saved source document and page, the data tables are parsed by scripts anyone can re-run, and an audit summary explains how the report was made and what was corrected along the way. The pages here are the report itself. If you find an error or can add evidence, propose a change; accepted changes update the website and its PDF.
Investigations¶
| Investigation | Government | Status | Headline |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States: how federal spending is controlled, and the Social Security and Medicare trust funds | United States federal government | Revision 1 (Oct. 6, 2026), not yet independently reviewed | Spending is controlled against appropriations, not authorizations ($494B of FY2026 money went to programs with expired authorizations); mandatory programs were 59.5% of FY2025 outlays; general revenue paid $571.7B of Medicare Parts B and D in 2025; Social Security's retirement fund runs out in late 2032 and Medicare Part A's in 2033. |
| Harris County, Texas: FY2027 budget | Harris County | Revision 2 (Sept. 23, 2026), independently reviewed | General Fund departmental appropriations rose 11.8% to $3.095B; a $181M planning gap was closed with the maximum no-election tax rate, $82.9M of one-time revenue and a $16M surplus drawdown; pay and spending decisions are disclosed but dispersed across separate votes and tables. |
| Houston ISD: funding and spending, FY2019-FY2027 | Houston Independent School District | Second edition, 2026-10-08 (history back to FY2019; labeled budget and forecast figures through FY2027); independently reviewed 2026-10-08 and rechecked 2026-10-12, corrections applied | After four General Fund surpluses (FY2019-FY2022), HISD ran $497 million of deficits in FY2023-FY2025 and its reserves fell below the FY2019 level; per-student state formula funding did not fall, and the state's larger share since 2023 is mostly tax-compression backfill that also ended HISD's recapture payments ($969 million over 2018-19 to 2024-25). |
Governments are filed by country, state or province, level (national, state, county, city, special district) and name; see how govspends is organized.
What you will find in each investigation¶
- The report, as web pages, with the same sections, tables and charts as the PDF (a PDF is rebuilt from these pages on every change).
- References: the URL, retrieval date and use of every document.
- Sources and files: every saved document, data file and script with its size and checksum, downloadable from the repository.
- An audit summary: how the evidence was gathered and processed, which figures are copied and which are computed, the judgment calls, the defects found and fixed, and how to re-verify.
- Reviews: independent reviews are published unchanged alongside the report, with the changes they led to.
Provenance and standards¶
The first investigation was prepared with an AI assistant working from public records under a person's direction, then independently reviewed; that history is documented, not hidden. Facts come from primary documents where one exists; news reports are used for events, votes and quotations and are cited by URL. Nothing here is legal, financial or investment advice, and govspends is not affiliated with any government.