Tea Party activists clamoring for federal spending restraint swarmed the polls in 2010 and sent dozens of fresh faces to Washington. A year after the new Congress was sworn in, the Tea Party has undeniably had a huge impact on the political and public policy debates in the nation’s capital. But what has actually happened to federal spending?

As always, there’s no easy answer to that question, because it’s heavily dependent on the context, especially given that Republicans only control the House of Representatives and anything they propose has to pass through the Democratic Senate before being signed by President Obama.