Government 10-K Replication

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Trellison Institute replicates the analytical framework published by USAFacts (Steve Ballmer, USAFacts.org), which treats the U.S. government as a public company and produces an annual report modeled on the SEC 10-K filing format. Trellison Institute has not contacted USAFacts and does not claim endorsement or affiliation. We replicate their published methodology because it represents the most accessible framework for applying corporate financial analysis rigor to federal fiscal data. We verify their numbers against source data. Negative results are results.

What This Service Does

USAFacts, founded by Steve Ballmer, publishes an annual "10-K for the government" — a comprehensive report treating the United States government like a publicly traded company. Revenue, spending, debt, deficits, and trust fund balances are presented using the same analytical frameworks investors apply to corporate filings.

Trellison replicates this approach independently. We pull the same source data from Treasury, BLS, Census, and the Federal Reserve, apply the same analytical structure, and compare our results against the published USAFacts report. Where our numbers match, validation is confirmed. Where they diverge, we document why.

The value is independent verification. When two independent systems analyze the same data with the same methodology and reach the same conclusions, the conclusions are stronger. When they diverge, the divergence itself is informative.

Analytical Framework

Published Methodology Applied

Revenue Analysis Individual income tax, corporate tax, social insurance, excise taxes, customs, estate and gift taxes. Year-over-year trends and composition analysis matching the USAFacts framework.

Spending Analysis Mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid), discretionary (defense, non-defense), and net interest. Category breakdowns with historical trend lines.

Debt and Deficit Tracking Total federal debt, debt held by public, annual deficit calculation, interest expense as percentage of revenue. Debt-to-GDP ratios and sustainability projections.

Trust Fund Analysis Social Security (OASI, DI), Medicare (HI, SMI) trust fund balances, projected depletion dates, and annual cash flow. Demographic projections for solvency analysis.

Data Sources

Public Data, Transparent Methods

Treasury Fiscal Data API — Monthly Treasury Statements, Daily Treasury Statements, debt-to-the-penny series. Primary source for revenue, spending, and debt figures.
USAspending.gov — Federal awards, contract spending, grant distributions by agency and program. Congressional appropriations tracking.
Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) — GDP series, interest rates, inflation indicators, monetary aggregates. Context for fiscal analysis.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — Employment data (JOLTS, QCEW), price indices, productivity measures. Labor market context for revenue projections.
Census Bureau — Population estimates, demographic projections, American Community Survey. Foundation for per-capita calculations and trust fund projections.
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — Published budget projections, long-term fiscal outlooks, and scoring of legislative proposals.

Our data pipeline: Trellison maintains fiscal data parquet files covering FY2015–FY2025 for revenue, spending, and debt. A government data mart provides normalized time series across 16+ federal fiscal indicators.

Media Assets

Narrated Video Library

Five narrated walkthroughs and five animated data visualizations covering each major fiscal domain, produced from the same source data used in the replication analysis:

Federal Revenue Narration MP3 + animated video. Income tax, corporate tax, social insurance, excise, customs, estate/gift breakdown with year-over-year trends.

Federal Spending Narration MP3 + animated video. Mandatory vs. discretionary breakdown, category-level spending analysis with historical context.

National Debt Narration MP3 + animated video. Total debt, debt held by public, debt-to-GDP trajectory, and sustainability projections.

Annual Deficit Narration MP3 + animated video. Revenue-minus-spending waterfall, historical deficit context, and CBO forward projections.

Net Interest Narration MP3 + animated video. Interest expense as percentage of revenue, interest rate sensitivity, and crowding-out analysis.

Visualization Library Revenue donuts, spending bars, deficit waterfalls, interest projections, and debt-to-GDP bands in basic, standard, and premium quality tiers. Plus 3 interactive HTML pages (debt, revenue, spending).

All media assets stored in internal storage object storage. Available to verified fiscal researchers and data journalists upon request.

Active Connectors

Live Data Infrastructure

Automated data ingestion

connector.treasury_fiscal — Treasury Fiscal Data API harvester. Monthly and daily statement ingestion.

connector.usaspending — USAspending federal awards harvester. Contract, grant, and loan data by agency.

connector.fred_series — FRED economic series harvester. GDP, interest rates, inflation, monetary indicators.

connector.bls_jolts — BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Employment context for revenue analysis.

connector.bls_qcew — Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Wage data for income tax revenue projections.

connector.census_acs — American Community Survey. Demographic data for per-capita and trust fund analysis.

Fiscal Data API routes — 8 active endpoints serving fiscal summary, revenue, spending, debt, trust funds, trade, demographics, and CBO projections with full data lineage.

Parsed Report Archive

USAFacts Annual Report Crosswalk

We have parsed the full USAFacts annual report into 242 structured sections, creating a machine-readable crosswalk between their report structure and our independently sourced data. Each section is mapped to its corresponding federal data source, enabling section-by-section verification.

Report structure analysis: 242 parsed sections with page index, section summaries, and source images. Crosswalk template mapping each USAFacts claim to Treasury, BLS, Census, or CBO source data.

This allows any researcher to verify any specific claim in the USAFacts report against the original federal source data, or to identify areas where the USAFacts methodology makes interpretive choices that could be validated differently.

Research Applications

Available for Verified Researchers

What researchers can do with this service

Independent fiscal verification — compare your own analysis against both USAFacts and Trellison calculations. Three independent analyses of the same data strengthen all conclusions.

Historical trend research — 10-year fiscal data series in parquet format, ready for analysis in Python, R, or any data tool.

Policy impact modeling — structured data for modeling the fiscal impact of proposed legislation, with CBO baseline projections as reference.

Data journalism — narrated video assets, interactive HTML visualizations, and exportable data tables for fiscal storytelling.

This service is free for fiscal researchers and data journalists whose methodology passes Trellison's evaluation criteria. We provide the data infrastructure and independent verification. Researchers provide the analysis and the questions. We do not advocate for fiscal policy positions — we measure what the numbers show.

Access This Service

If you are a researcher studying federal fiscal policy, government finance, or public sector economics, request access to our fiscal data pipeline and replication materials.

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