A federal budget tracker follows the money decisions Congress is actually making right now: the twelve annual appropriations bills, any stopgap keeping the government open, the funding deadline, and where every dollar of local project money went. It answers "what is happening with government funding" the way a scoreboard answers "who is winning."
Budget versus appropriations
The words get used interchangeably, but they are different documents. The President's budget is a request, released each spring, that Congress is free to ignore and largely does. The budget resolution is Congress's own non binding framework. The appropriations bills are the twelve laws that actually spend the money. A useful tracker follows the third thing, because only the third thing becomes law.
What a good tracker shows
Four things cover nearly every question. Where each of the twelve bills stands in each chamber, verified against official sources, which is the tracker here. Whether a shutdown is possible at the next deadline, computed live on the shutdown page. What Congress is doing this week, on the calendar. And where the earmark money went, which the state by state map covers for all fifty states with every project linked to its official disclosure table.
What the numbers are
The twelve bills together carry roughly $1.64 trillion in annual discretionary spending, about a quarter of the federal budget. The rest, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt, is mandatory spending that flows without an annual vote. That is why a government shutdown pauses national parks but not Social Security checks: shutdowns only touch the discretionary money the twelve bills control.
How this one stays current
Approps refreshes bill statuses, the stopgap's position, and the news wire several times a day from primary congressional sources, and every fact links back to where it came from. The full process, from the President's request to a signed law, is explained on the process page.