Finding detailed information on federal spending on subsidy programs is easy using Subsidyscope.org. Subsidyscope filters the government's USASpending dataset by economic sector and for entries that are likely to represent subsidies, and offers analytic tools to make sense of the huge quantity of relevant records (which typically number in the hundreds of thousands per sector).
Researchers, journalists and the general public are invited to search Subsidyscope's database of entries on federal spending in the sectors we cover. All content on Subsidyscope is part of the public domain, meaning data can be freely used and cited in other analyses.
To learn more, watch this tutorial by Subsidyscope Project Director Marcus Peacock, who explains how to search the transportation database using basic and advanced options. Although the material Marcus covers is focused on the transportation sector, the search interface for most sectors is very similar. The screencast should be useful for anyone who wishes to use Subsidyscope to learn more about government spending, regardless of the sector she is interested in.
Watch the two-part screencast below, then explore the search functionality for yourself by navigating to a sector page and looking for the appropriate search options under "Direct Expenditures."
