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Federal Funds for States - Navigating NASBO vs. FFIS vs. Other State Budget Data
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What is this? - As we collectively work to respond to the fury of federal actions that could impact states (and localities), we're cognizant of the fact that some noticeables differences in the data available on federal expenditures and revenue in states may raise questions about how best to utilize the data, and in which cases. This sheet offers a concise overview and suggested how-to regarding these issues.
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Bottom-line: In the wake of recent Trump and congressional Republican actions, CBPP's generated some new public and network-facing resources for better understanding federal flows to states. But these data are compiled from different sources, and do not always precisely align - in fact, for some states, there are some fairly noticeable differences.

It's also the case that some states do a more adequate and transparent job than others with tracking and describing federal totals within their own budgets, and/or other state financial documents - data which furthermore will result in different numbers. Lastly, there are other publically available data - in particular figures from the US Census, and published periodically by Pew among others, that characterize the share of state and local *revenue* by state; these also differ from the FFIS and NASBO data (in large part because the latter two illustrate expenditures, versus revenue).
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How do I interpret these differences? - There's no overarching, all encompassing answer to this question. But some key facts and nuances to highlight would include:
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State budget documents - If federal totals are readily available in your state budget or associated documents, please feel free to prioritize those figures and then layer-in the NASBO and FFIS as helpful supplements (some potential language and ways to think about doing that available further down). Unfortunately, such totals are oftentimes buried, difficult or time-consuming to interpret or compile, or unavailable altogether on the state-level.
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NASBO - These data, highlighted in CBPP's recent federal cost-shifting brief and available via their 2024 State Expenditure Report, capture the scope federal funds as a share of state-level budget expenditures in given years. In other words, these are federal dollars provided to specific agencies and programs that show up - in some form or fashion, depending on the state - in state budgets. It is fair to shorthand the NASBO data as federal funds as a share of state spending, or share of state budgets, as needed (and as done in the CBPP report).

It is important to note these data do *not* include the broader universe of federal funds that flow directly to localities or to individuals (e.g. pensions, food assistance, etc.). See FFIS note below.

It is also important to note these data are self-reported by states to NASBO, and states have traditionally exhibited some differences in the precision and idiosyncracies of their reporting. This means the figures may differ slightly from finer-grain state budget or financial documents you may have access to from your own state-level collecting and expertise.
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FFIS - These data are both broader and finer-grain than NASBO's in some important ways.

First, they *do* include totals for money flowing directly to local governments and individuals, which means their topline statewide totals are going to be larger than NASBO's (which again, are limited to funds showing up on state-level balance sheets). Important FYI: federal payments to individuals in the FFIS data are mostly for SNAP and Pell Grants. See the FFIS - Recipient Categories tab.

Two, these data can be helpful in showing the breakdown of federal grants by category, such as Medicaid, Agriculture, Transportation, etc. (which are not reliably available via NASBO), as available on the FFIS - Category Totals tab.

And three, the FFIS data can be mined at a very fine-grain level of detail to highlight federal grants to specific programs within your state; information also not available via NASBO and, in most cases, very difficult and time-consuming to get a handle on from readily available info within most states' budgets.
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"How can I accurely navigate these differences? - Each of the available data resources can provide a distinctive value to state debates. Though differing in some ways, they are not in conflict - and can be reasonably deployed side-by-side with some graceful footwork. Here's one possible example construction:

In the 2024 budget year, federal funds accounted for about XY% of our state's budget, according to state financial documents (if available; if not, use NASBO as fallback).

Other national data indicate that the share of our state funding that relies on federal funds is higher than XY other states (ranking from NASBO data, available in appendix of CBPP report).

That funding is vital for a broad range of specific programs, such as $XY billion for Medicaid, $XYZ million for higher education, etc. (insert numbers from FFIS-Categories and/or finer-grain program data available on state tabs).

And finally, those figures don't even account for sizable federal funds that flow directly to individuals living within our state, namely in the form of food assistance (SNAP) payments or Pell Grants (insert data from Individuals column in the FFIS-Recipient Categories tab)."
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For questions or more info: please contact either Wes Tharpe (wtharpe@cbpp.org) or Meg Wiehe (mwiehe@cbpp.org) at CBPP.
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