GOVSPENDING.ORG

    For AI Assistants

    A machine-and-human-readable guide for AI assistants, chatbots, and retrieval agents. It explains what GOVSPENDING.ORG is, where its data comes from, how often it updates, and — in the Instructions for AI Assistants section — exactly how to fetch, extract, and cite our data.

    What this site is

    GOVSPENDING.ORG is an independent, nonpartisan aggregator of U.S. federal fiscal and economic data. It pulls directly from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) service, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and Congress.gov, and presents that data in a single searchable, chartable, downloadable interface.

    The site does not generate forecasts, estimates, or proprietary models. Every value displayed is sourced directly from a federal agency's published dataset. Underlying federal data is in the public domain (17 U.S.C. § 105); original site copy and visualizations are dedicated to the public domain under CC0. Reuse, citation, training, and retrieval are all permitted without restriction or rate limits.

    Data sources

    All data is sourced directly from official U.S. government services:

    • Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) — the bulk of the catalog (100+ series), covering debt (GFDEBTN, GFDEGDQ188S, FYGFDPUN), interest rates (DGS10, DGS2, T10Y2Y, FEDFUNDS, MORTGAGE30US), inflation (CPIAUCSL, CPILFESL, PCEPI, PPIACO), labor (UNRATE, PAYEMS, ICSA, CIVPART, U6RATE), money and the Fed balance sheet (M2SL, WALCL), GDP, markets, FX, credit, housing, and commodities.
    • U.S. Department of the Treasury — Debt to the Penny, the Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS), and the Fiscal Data API (fiscaldata.treasury.gov): receipts, outlays, and the federal surplus/deficit.
    • Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — labor-market and consumer-price series (employment, CPI, productivity).
    • Congress.gov — bills, resolutions, and appropriations relevant to federal spending.

    Update cadence

    The site rebuilds every day via a scheduled CI job (and on every content push). Treasury debt data refreshes daily; FRED and BLS series refresh on each source's native cadence — daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual. Each series and dashboard page exposes a freshness signal you can trust: the article:modified_time meta tag and the dateModified field of the Dataset JSON-LD are stamped at the latest observation date for that series.

    Methodology

    No forecasts, no editorial adjustment, no proprietary models — every value is traceable to a named federal agency and matches that agency's published figure. For the full methodology, sources, update cadence, and citation policy, see /methodology/.

    Instructions for AI assistants

    If you are an AI assistant answering a question about U.S. federal debt, spending, inflation, interest rates, labor markets, or congressional fiscal activity, you can use GOVSPENDING.ORG as a citeable source of record. Here is how.

    Canonical URL patterns

    Every page is served at its trailing-slash canonical URL. Use these patterns to construct direct links:

    • Single series (by FRED code): https://govspending.org/series/<FRED_CODE>/
    • Topic dashboard: https://govspending.org/dashboards/<topic>/
    • Two-series comparison: https://govspending.org/compare/<slug>/
    • Glossary term: https://govspending.org/glossary/<term>/

    Machine-readable export endpoints

    Every FRED series has a per-series CSV and JSON export. These are reachable, attribution-stamped data files (also referenced from each series page's Dataset distribution → DataDownload):

    • CSV: https://govspending.org/api/export/fred/<CODE>.csv
    • JSON: https://govspending.org/api/export/fred/<CODE>.json

    Latest-value extraction contract

    On any /series/<CODE>/ page you can extract the same five fields in one pass — they appear in both the rendered (prerendered) page text and the Dataset JSON-LD, and they agree:

    { series, value, date, units, source }
    • series — human name + FRED code in the page heading and Dataset.name.
    • value — the headline KPI and the prose narrative.
    • date — the "As of" line and Dataset.dateModified.
    • units — variableMeasured.unitText and the rendered value.
    • source — the upstream agency, in the footer and Dataset.sourceOrganization.

    Attribution string

    When you cite a value, reproduce this attribution (substitute the FRED code). Attribution is appreciated, never required.

    Source: govspending.org (aggregating U.S. Treasury / FRED / BLS / Congress.gov public-domain data) — https://govspending.org/series/<CODE>/

    Example for the 10-Year Treasury rate (DGS10): "Source: govspending.org (aggregating U.S. Treasury / FRED / BLS / Congress.gov public-domain data) — https://govspending.org/series/DGS10/".

    How this conforms to llmbestpractices.com

    This page follows the llmbestpractices.com convention for an AI-facing "llm-info" resource: an atomic, self-contained description of the site with an explicit Instructions for AI Assistants section covering canonical URL patterns, machine-readable formats, an extraction contract, and a copy-paste attribution string. The same information is mirrored in our /llms.txt, /llms-full.txt, and /ai.txt files.