In fiscal crises in a number of countries around the world, investors have lost confidence in governments’ abilities to manage their budgets, and those governments have lost their ability to borrow at affordable rates. With U.S. government debt already at a level that is high by historical standards, and the prospect that, under current policies, [...]

People born in other countries are a growing presence in the U.S. labor force. In 2009, more than 1 in 7 people in the U.S. labor force were born elsewhere; 15 years earlier, only 1 in 10 was foreign born. About 40 percent of the foreign-born labor force in 2009 was from Mexico and Central [...]

This morning CBO released a brief about the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) program. The DI program pays cash benefits to nonelderly adults (those younger than age 66) who are judged to be unable to perform “substantial” work because of a disability but who have worked in the past; the program also pays benefits to [...]

This morning CBO released a letter to Chairman Fortney Pete Stark analyzing a proposal to add a “public plan” to the options available through the health insurance exchanges that will be established under the recently enacted health care legislation—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA (Public Law 111-148).   Under the proposal, the Department of [...]

The Congress created the Arsenal Support Program Initiative (ASPI) in 2001 to help maintain the functional capabilities of the Army’s three manufacturing arsenals, which are located in Rock Island, Ill., Watervliet, N.Y., and Pine Bluff, Ark. A primary goal of the program is to enable commercial firms to lease vacant space at the arsenals once [...]

The federal government supports the use of biofuels—transportation fuel produced usually from renewable plant matter, such as corn—in the pursuit of national energy, environmental, and agricultural policy goals. Tax credits encourage the production and sale of biofuels in the United States, while federal mandates specify minimum amounts and types of biofuel usage each year through [...]

Yesterday, CBO issued its Monthly Budget Review, which discussed the status of the federal budget through the end of June, encompassing the first nine months of fiscal year 2020.  At that point, the deficit was about $1.0 trillion, about $80 billion dollars less than the shortfall last year at this time. Revenues were about the same [...]

Social Security is the federal government’s largest single program, and as the U.S. population grows older in the coming decades, its cost is projected to increase more rapidly than its revenues. That trend, in combination with the rising cost of the government’s health care programs, will lead to sharp increases in government spending relative to [...]

Recently, the federal government has been recording the largest budget deficits, as a share of the economy, since the end of World War II. As a result of those deficits, the amount of federal debt held by the public has surged. At the end of 2008, that debt equaled 40 percent of the nation’s annual [...]

Yesterday CBO released estimates of average federal tax rates—households’ federal tax liability divided by their income—in 2007 for households with various amounts of income.  For each income category, the report also presents estimates of average before-tax and after-tax household income; the number of households; and that category’s share of taxes and income. A page on [...]

Earlier this week, CBO’s Acting Assistant Director for National Security, Matthew Goldberg, spoke to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform on the topic of discretionary defense spending. Last month, representatives of CBO spoke to the commission on three different occasions to provide information on tax policy, discretionary spending, and mandatory spending. Discretionary defense spending [...]

CBO’s greatest asset is its staff, committed not only to its important work supporting the Congress, but also to significant causes outside the office. For a fifth consecutive year, members of CBO’s staff formed a Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure team to support the fight against breast cancer. Captained by CBO Webmaster and breast [...]

The federal budget deficit was $941 billion during the first eight months of fiscal year 2010, CBO estimates in its latest monthly budget review, $51 billion less than the shortfall recorded over the same period last year. Both revenues and outlays were lower than the corresponding amounts during the same period last year, by 2 [...]

Lenny Skutnik is a household name belonging to an unassuming Congressional Budget Office employee who insists he “wasn’t a hero” when one winter day in 1982 he jumped from the shore into the icy Potomac River to save a drowning woman after an Air Florida flight crashed on takeoff.  “I was just someone who helped [...]