Trump Cutting & Spending: Day 45

It’s hard to keep up with all of the Trump administration’s activities. There is such a flurry of activity related to funding, regulations, and executive actions that no one can keep up with everything. Individuals and news outlets have scarce resources and attention. There’s the added typical challenge of filtering out fact from analysis. If only there was way to summarize the administration’s activities in an objective and meaningful sense.

Luckily, numbers don’t lie – and the federal government publishes a lot of numbers. Specifically, they publish the Daily Treasury Statement which identifies each day’s various categories of outlays. We can look at the raw number of spending to get a sense for where and whether Trump is changing spending within the federal government.

Lauren Bauer at The Hamilton Project noticed that the US Treasury has an API for those daily statements. She created a nice online tool at Brookings that is relatively user friendly. Individuals can visit and see each day’s spending or the cumulative spending throughout the year. Below is the cumulative federal spending for 2024 and 2025. As of March 5^th, the US has spent a total of 5.2% more in 2025 than in the year prior (that’s on track with the growth rate of GDP). Importantly, she makes all of the data available for download so that individuals can conduct their own analysis. I lean on her data here.

Where have the cuts been happening? The below graph includes the 5 spending areas that have been most deeply cut relative to the same day in 2024.* The red line denotes inauguration day. The USAID cuts made big news, and it seems like they knew something was happening around the time of inauguration. It looks like they were trying to get spending out the door before the taps were shut off. The FCC and the Library of Congress were also affected by the funding freeze that was announced in late January.

President Trump claims to have made cutting waste a priority. With Elon Musk in tow, the administration has made waves by disrupting USAID, the NSF, and federal payroll. We’re 45 days into the administration. We can use the data provided by the Treasury and made accessible by Bauer to evaluate how the Trump administrations has been spending and cutting according to the numbers.

One way to evaluate spending is to compare the cumulative spending over the course of 2024 and 2025. That is, spending on the 45^th day of the year should be more or less comparable in 2024 vs 2025. It’s still early in the year and since various payments can be quite irregular, there’s a lot of noise in the data so far. But we should be able to see big changes. Smaller changes will be easier to see as the year goes on.

The 5 areas of greatest cumulative spending growth relative to 2024 are graphed below.* It does look like some funding was trying to get out of the door prior to Trump taking office, but that’s just speculation on my part. FEMA spending was up, likely due to the fires in California. Much more US Treasury spending is happening, specifically for Claims, Judgments, & Relief. We might see that remain elevated as the new administration keeps ‘trying’ things and then being stopped by injunctions, being the subject of lawsuits, and owing compensation.

While big percent changes in outlays can have massive implications for individual programs, Musk and Trump will need to cut huge amounts in order to claim any kind of victory over profligate spending. (Just so we’re all on the same page, they will fail if they refuse to touch old-age entitlements.) Where have the biggest spending cuts happened as measured by actually dollars? See below.*** The deepest and most consistent cuts are coming from the reductions in federal employee insurance payments. Similarly, the USAID and FCC cuts amount to a $2 billion cut from this time last year. Department of Education spending and the hospital insurance trust fund are down, but are also more volatile in their expenditures. Those one-time spikes in the data are due to pay dates between 2024 and 2025 being offset by a day or two.

But, where are we spending more? Are you ready? You only get one guess… Entitlements!**** FEMA spending is also in there due to the California fires, but it’s mostly entitlements otherwise. And interest! Don’t forget the interest. The two biggest drivers of spending growth are social security benefit payments and payments for Medicare prescription drugs.

While it is true that the administration has cut in some areas, those cuts pale in comparison to the increases in entitlement spending. For clarity: we’re reducing government services so that we can afford to engage in redistribution, mostly for older people. Will this change anytime soon? Probably not. Republicans have a majority in congress and control the white house. While Republicans have historically paid lip service to fiscal responsibility, the 14^th plank in the 2024 party platform is “FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE”. So there’s that.

*I’ve omitted “TREAS – ESF Economic Recovery Programs” and “IRS – Business Tax Refunds (EFT)” since those are probably related to the covid recovery programs.
** I’ve omitted “International Assistance Programs – Multilateral Assistance” from the list since it ratcheted up throughout 2024 in big discrete jumps. It will be more informative to look at that once we’re further into the year.
***I’ve omitted the “Federal Financing Bank” which makes loans on the government’s behalf, including to federal corporations because its spending varies discretely by massive amounts over the course of the year. I’ve also omitted “IRS – Business Tax Refunds (EFT)” because it also reflects the wind-down in covid programs.
****I’ve omitted NA & unclassified spending.