In short
“You Make the Budget” is a free, ad-free citizen simulator. Anyone can build the federal budget from real measures, costed and sourced, and see the effect of their choices on the deficit and the debt in fiscal year 2036.
- Starting point: the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline of February 2026 for fiscal year 2027, adjusted for CBO's August 2026 update on tariffs.
- Horizon: fiscal year 2036, the end of CBO's ten-year window, calculated year by year.
- 20 items and over 120 measures proposed by public institutions, members of Congress from both parties, administrations and think tanks. Every amount links to a source.
- Effects on the economy always counted: part of every saving or tax increase is lost again because the economy slows down.
- Orders of magnitude, not official forecasts. The assumptions are set out below so they can be discussed.
- No personal data: choices stay in the visitor's browser.
Starting data (fiscal year 2027)
| Item | Value used | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Federal revenue | $5,815 billion | CBO, February 2026 ($5,885 billion), minus about $70 billion of tariff revenue (CBO, August 2026) |
| Federal outlays | $7,782 billion | CBO, February 2026 ($7,772 billion), plus about $10 billion of interest |
| Deficit | $1,967 billion · 5.9% of GDP | Tool calculation |
| Gross domestic product (GDP) | $33,315 billion | CBO, February 2026 |
| Debt held by the public, end of 2027 | 102.7% of GDP | CBO (102.1%), plus the larger-than-projected 2026 deficit and the tariff update |
| Net interest | ≈ $1.1 trillion · 3.4% of GDP | CBO, February 2026 |
The federal budget covers Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as well as everything Congress funds each year. States and cities run their own budgets, which are not included.
Growth assumptions
The visitor chooses one of three assumptions. “Nominal” growth includes inflation: it is what makes GDP, taxes and spending grow.
| Assumption | What it assumes | Nominal growth used, 2028-2036 |
|---|---|---|
| CBO (default) | Real growth of 1.8% a year on average, inflation of about 2%. | ≈ 3.8% a year |
| Administration | Real growth of 3.0% a year, as assumed in the President's FY2027 budget, inflation of about 2.1%. | ≈ 5.1% a year |
| Cautious | Real growth of 1.5% a year, the low end of Federal Reserve officials' long-run range, inflation of 2%. | ≈ 3.5% a year |
All three start from the same 2027 deficit, 5.9% of GDP.
Why 3% of GDP?
The United States has no legal limit on the deficit. The 3% mark used by the simulator is a target with support from both parties: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has made it the goal of his “3-3-3” plan, and resolutions introduced in 2026 in the House and the Senate by Republicans and Democrats call for keeping the deficit at or below 3% of GDP; economists from both sides, such as Jason Furman and Jared Bernstein, have backed it. With debt around 100% of GDP and nominal growth near 4%, a 3% deficit would bring the debt down slowly compared with the economy. The tool shows it as a reference, not as an obligation.
The calculation, year by year
The simulator moves forward from 2028 to 2036. Each year:
- GDP grows according to the chosen assumption.
- Measures phase in. A measure has half its effect in 2028, then its full effect. Defense, Social Security and measures flagged as gradual phase in over four years.
- The effort is counted net of effects on the economy: the share lost for each item is removed (see below).
- The economy slows by about half of the effort: an effort of one point of GDP lowers GDP by about half a point. This weighs on the deficit and debt ratios.
- The average interest rate on the debt changes: each year about 14% of the debt is repriced. The average rate moves gradually from 3.4% to about 4.2%, the average rate on new borrowing (CBO projections).
- The deficit adds to the debt, and each year's interest adds to the deficit: the “snowball” effect.
With no new measures, the deficit excluding interest follows CBO's baseline: it falls a little, by about 0.3 point of GDP by 2036, mainly because spending decided each year by Congress grows with inflation rather than with the economy, while Social Security and Medicare grow faster. Provisions scheduled to expire under current law expire as planned, as in CBO's baseline. With CBO's assumption, the deficit would reach about 6.9% of GDP in 2036 (CBO, adjusted for tariffs: about 6.9%), and the debt about 124% of GDP (CBO, adjusted: about 122.5%; the tool's simplified model is slightly higher).
In formulas
For year k (k = 1 in 2028, k = 9 in 2036), with g the nominal growth rate and Ef, Eg the net efforts (fast and gradual) in 2027 billions of dollars:
Bₖ: change in the primary deficit already built into current law (CBO baseline), reaching −$100 billion in 2027 dollars, about −0.3% of GDP, in 2036.
Effects on the economy
When the government spends less or taxes more, households and businesses spend less, and so pay less tax: part of the effort is lost again. Conversely, spending more or cutting taxes supports activity and brings back some revenue. The tool applies to each measure a lost share that depends on its item:
| Item | Share lost |
|---|---|
| Defense; veterans; safety net; education and research; infrastructure; Medicaid | 45% |
| Social Security; Medicare; other federal programs | 40% |
| Payroll taxes | 35% |
| Corporate income tax; tariffs | 30% |
| Individual income tax; consumption and energy taxes; tax breaks | 25% |
| Investment income | 20% |
| Foreign aid; estates and great fortunes | 10% |
| Tax enforcement | 0% |
The share is larger for public spending and payroll taxes, whose money is almost entirely spent in the U.S. economy, and smaller for taxes paid mostly by the wealthiest, who save part of their income. Foreign aid is mostly spent abroad.
The results shown to the visitor always separate three amounts: the direct effect of their measures, the effect on the economy, and the real effect on the deficit.
Scope: the federal budget
- 19 items have a slider: 10 for spending (including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) and 9 for revenue.
- Interest on the debt is fixed: the simulator calculates it; the government cannot decide to stop paying interest.
- The amounts of the smaller spending items (veterans, safety net, education and research, infrastructure, foreign aid, other programs) are tool estimates from CBO and Treasury data; together with the other items they add up to total outlays.
The choice of measures
What goes into the tool
A measure is included if it is backed by members of Congress, an administration, a public institution or a recognized think tank, and if its cost has been estimated publicly. The measures are chosen to cover, for each item, the range of possible choices, from large savings to large increases, or from tax cuts to tax increases. They are not meant to represent parties: you choose a measure for what it does, not for who proposes it.
Costings
- Most measures use a published estimate: Congressional Budget Office, Joint Committee on Taxation, Treasury, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Penn Wharton Budget Model, Tax Foundation, Yale Budget Lab, Congressional Research Service. Others apply a simple calculation to official figures; they are flagged as “tool estimate”, with the detailed calculation.
- Amounts are annual averages in billions of dollars, usually a ten-year estimate divided by ten. The window of each estimate is given.
- When estimates disagree strongly, the tool keeps an intermediate value and shows the range and the reason in a warning.
- Estimates made before the 2025 tax and spending law (Public Law 119-21) are flagged when the law changes their value.
The rules
- No double counting. A measure already enacted is never offered as an additional saving; reversing it is offered in the other direction (“Reverse the 2025 law's…”).
- Incompatibilities. Two contradictory measures, or two versions of the same reform, are never added together.
- Sliders. The range of each slider equals the total of the measures in each direction, without adding two incompatible measures.
- Warnings and caveats. The same rule applies to every measure, whatever its side: a warning flags a conflict with the Constitution or a treaty, or an estimate very far from independent estimates; a caveat flags a very uncertain yield or large behavioral effects.
- Independent verification. Before the beta, separate reviewers who did not build the tool checked every measure against its source; their corrections have been applied.
The profiles
The profile describes a budget strategy, not a political affiliation. It depends on the visitor's position on two axes: net spending (spending increases minus savings) and net taxes (increases minus cuts), in billions of dollars a year.
- The Steady Hand: less than $30 billion of change on each axis.
- The Trimmer: less spending and lower taxes.
- The Builder: more spending and higher taxes.
- The Fixer: the choices reduce the deficit (savings, tax increases, or both).
- The Booster: the choices increase the deficit (more spending, tax cuts, or both).
When one axis is negligible (less than $20 billion, or less than a quarter of the other), the profile follows the effect of the choices on the deficit.
Known limits
- Effects on the economy are averages by item. They do not reflect the specific effects of each measure, except where a caveat says so.
- Market interest rates do not react to the level of the deficit or the debt.
- Taxes and spending follow GDP, apart from the small current-law trend described above: specific trends (aging, health costs) are not projected separately.
- Some estimates are several years old or come from the measure's supporters: the source and date are always shown.
- The tool does not measure who wins and who loses. The “In practice” text of each measure only describes who is affected, and how.
- The simulator does not replace an official forecast or a full score by an independent body.
Beta version and corrections
Every number has been checked and sourced, but errors may remain. Does a figure, a source or a presentation seem wrong or biased? Use the “Report an error” button under each measure, or write to contact (at) youmakethebudget.org. Corrections are made as they come in.
Main sources
- CBO, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036 (February 2026)
- CBO, updated projections of tariffs (August 2026)
- Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Broad, Bipartisan Support for a 3% Deficit Target (2026)
- CBO, Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2025 to 2034
- Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Budget Offsets Bank
- Tax Foundation, Options for Reforming America's Tax Code 3.0 (2026)
- Penn Wharton Budget Model, Yale Budget Lab, Congressional Research Service, Joint Committee on Taxation, U.S. Treasury, KFF
- Blanchard O. and Leigh D. (2013), “Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers”, IMF working paper; Alesina A., Favero C. and Giavazzi F. (2019), Austerity: When It Works and When It Doesn't, Princeton University Press
The detailed sources of each measure, with links, are shown in the simulator (the “?” button next to each measure).