The Comparison Desk
Bills, Side by Side
Two laws from two different years, on one footing. The dollars in a bill’s text are the dollars of the year it was written, so a 2013 law and a 2025 law of the same real size do not look the same size — this page removes that difference with the deflator the government uses on its own books, and keeps the figures as written right beside it.
What compares, and what refuses to
Dollars, mechanisms, verification and timing are measured the same way on every law, so those rows genuinely compare. Spending categories are not: each one comes out of that law’s own structure, and lining them up across columns would mean inventing a shared taxonomy no bill text supports. They are shown per law, marked as each law’s own. And on several laws the tracked total is a floor rather than the law’s fiscal size — those columns say so above the number, not beneath it.
Pick the laws
2 of 4 selected · 31 laws on file — scroll the boxSide by side
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| H.R. 133 Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (incl. Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2021) 116th Congress · FY2021 | H.R. 2617 Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 117th Congress · FY2023 | |
|---|---|---|
| Tracked total, as written | $2.15T | $2.15T |
| In FY2025 dollars The row that makes the comparison mean anything — the same figures with prices removed, using the deflator OMB uses on its own tables. | $2.52T prices +17% since FY2021 | $2.27T prices +6% since FY2023 |
| Against one year of federal outlays A yardstick that needs no deflator. Not a share of that year’s budget — most of this money spends over several years. | 31.5% of $6.82T in FY2021 | 35.1% of $6.13T in FY2023 |
| How the money is provided Which words in the law move the money — an appropriating clause, or a direct grant of budget authority in the law itself. This is not the mandatory-versus-discretionary split: an appropriations act routinely carries mandatory programmes like Medicaid and SNAP, and those count as appropriated here because that is what their text does. | By an appropriating clause $2.15T (100%) | By an appropriating clause $2.15T (100%) |
| Disclosed separately, not added to the total Two different reasons a figure is not added in. Ceilings, guarantees and pay-fors never become outlays; set-asides do, but they sit inside a line already counted, so adding them would count the same dollars twice. | $46.4B Trust-fund obligation limits $2.61T Loan-guarantee ceilings $575.5B Revenue & offsets (pay-fors) $19.7B Set-asides (already counted above) — inside a line above, not extra money | $72.4B Trust-fund obligation limits $1.33T Loan-guarantee ceilings $35.6B Set-asides (already counted above) — inside a line above, not extra money |
| Where it goes Each law’s own categories, read out of its own structure. They are deliberately not lined up across columns: no bill text supports a shared taxonomy, and inventing one would make the mapping the biggest claim on the page. | 46% health 13% commerce & housing credit 12% national defense 11% income security 9% veterans +3 more on its page | 52% health 21% defense 12% income security 12% veterans 2% education +2 more on its page |
| CBO on the deficit Printed only with the basis it was scored on — CBO publishes different figures on different bases, and a figure without its basis is how a true number becomes a misleading one. | no verified estimate on file | no verified estimate on file |
| How well it is pinned down Figures re-located in the source as exact strings, and the share of tracked dollars the text itself dates to a fiscal year. | 40 of 40 sampled figures re-located 40 line items · 31 in the total 18% of dollars dated by the text | 31 of 31 sampled figures re-located 31 line items · 25 in the total 21% of dollars dated by the text |
Every figure here is the one the linked bill page renders, from the same extraction — this page computes nothing about a law that its own page does not. The one thing added is the constant-dollar row, which applies the government’s composite outlay deflator at the fiscal year of each law’s action date. That is an approximation for money that spends over a decade, and it is the reason the nominal figures stay directly above it rather than being replaced.
The same laws, on one yardstick
compare any two side by side →Nominal dollars from different years are not comparable — a 2013 law reads about a third smaller than a 2025 law of the same size, for no reason but prices. The second column fixes that with the federal government’s own deflator, in FY2025 dollars; the third needs no deflator at all and asks a different question, so the two are a check on each other. Neither is a claim about a law’s merit, and neither is a share of any single year’s budget: most of these laws appropriate money that is spent across several fiscal years. On 5 of 31 rows the tracked total is a floor rather than the law’s fiscal size — those rows say so, and ordering them by this column gets their relative size wrong on purpose.
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Constant dollars use the composite outlay deflator OMB deflates its own historical tables with — a spending-weighted index over what federal outlays actually buy, not a consumer price index, because the federal government does not buy a household’s shopping basket. It is applied at the fiscal year of each law’s action date, which is an approximation for money that spends over a decade; the nominal figure beside it is the one quoted from the bill text and is the only figure here taken from the law itself. 2 of 31 laws fall outside the published deflator series — OMB has not closed that fiscal year yet — and shows no constant-dollar figure rather than an estimated one. Source: OMB Historical Tables, Table 10.1 (Gross Domestic Product and Deflators Used in the Historical Tables: 1940-2031), cross-checked against Table 1.3 · figures. Total federal outlays by fiscal year come from the same tables, and are shown in full at federal spending by year.
Constant dollars use OMB Historical Tables, Table 10.1 (Gross Domestic Product and Deflators Used in the Historical Tables: 1940-2031), cross-checked against Table 1.3. Every dollar figure originates in the enacted text and is cited to its section on the law’s own page. All tracked bills · Federal spending by year · How laws are selected