May 26, 2010 – Subsidyscope presents government data and summary statistics on federal programs and tax policies that provide subsidies to nonprofit organizations. Subsidyscope’s analysis found government data to be of poor quality. However, the analysis also discovered that the nonprofit sector is overwhelmingly subsidized indirectly through tax subsidies.

Subsidyscope determined that the government data on tax subsidies is generally of higher quality than data on grants, contracts and risk transfers because tax expenditures are estimated by one agency, the Treasury Department, while the data on grants, contracts and risk transfers originate from many different agencies that differ in interpretation of, and compliance with, reporting requirements. Thus, the highest quality data coincide with the largest source of subsidies to the nonprofit sector. Read more » Permalink

April 29, 2010 – Subsidyscope began posting analysis of the financial bailout in January 2009 and is now providing updates with new information and estimates where available. Click here to read more about changes in estimates of federal subsidies to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, new TARP subsidy projections from CBO, updates about TARP warrants and information about repayments under TARP. Permalink

March 4, 2010 – Recent updates to the TARP subsidy estimates indicate that the previously projected cost of the program to the government for fiscal year 2009 has decreased to $152 billion. This is a significant reduction to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate from March 2009, when the long-term costs were expected to be $356 billion. That estimate represented a significant increase from CBO’s previous January 2009 estimate that the program would cost $189 for the FY 2009–2010 period.

Further, January 2010 CBO estimates show that the program will bring in revenue for FY 2010, and then cost the government an additional $16 billion from FY 2011–2020. Pew Economic Policy Group’s Doug Hamilton was quoted in a recent article discussing TARP estimates, in which he confirmed that the projections of TARP’s lifetime costs “are a lot lower than they were last year, mostly because the stock market values have improved so much.”

While TARP cost estimates have decreased considerably, CBO’s recent projections indicate that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will impose relatively large costs on the Treasury; the latest estimate for the costs of Fannie and Freddie total $176 billion for FY 2009-2020. Subsidyscope will be updating these and other bailout related information on its Web site soon. Permalink

December 3, 2009 – Finding detailed information on aviation, highway, transit, rail and maritime transportation spending by the federal government is easy using Subsidyscope.org.

Researchers, journalists and the general public are invited to search Subsidyscope's database of over 700,000 entries on federal transportation spending. All content on Subsidyscope is part of the public domain, meaning data can be freely used and cited in other analyses.

To learn more, see this tutorial by Subsidyscope Project Director Marcus Peacock, who explains how to search the transportation database using basic and advanced options. Watch the two-part screencast » Permalink