Blog
Welcome to our blog – The Bottom Line, where you’ll find up-to-date commentary and analysis on the most important news in the fiscal world. Below is a list of our blog posts.
Inverting the Rewards of Inversions
Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) have introduced legislation that would reduce the benefits to companies that choose to "invert,"...
Appropriations Watch: FY 2015
Here is a link to the Appropriations Watch for FY 2020. Final FY2015 funding was settled through the " CROmnibus" bill in December 2014 and March 2015...
CFED: Housing Tax Incentives are Upside Down
Tax breaks for homeowners are one of the largest categories of tax breaks offered by the federal government. A new report by the Corporation for...
CBO: GSE Reform Saves $58 Billion (Or $7 Billion)
One of the bills to replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and overhaul the housing finance system just got a verdict from CBO: it will save $58 billion...
What Happened to Interest Rates?
One of the biggest stories in CBO's August budget update was the huge downward revision to expected spending on interest to service the debt, down by...
Medicare Growth Continues to Be Slow
Prior to the release of CBO's August baseline, we surmised that one of the revisions to the budget would come from Medicare, whose growth in 2014 had...
CFR: U.S. Falling Behind Other Advanced Countries on Debt
The Council on Foreign Relations has released a new report and scorecard comparing the United States federal debt situation to other G-7 countries...
Separating "Current Law" from A "Do Nothing" Baseline
CBO’s baseline budget projections are often referred to as “current law” since they generally assume Congress continues the laws as they are written...
The Health Spending Outlook Has Improved But Pick-Up in Growth Still Expected
In a highly anticipated release, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) this week released updated data and projections on National...
The $1.8 Trillion Drop in Revenue Projections
With the economy recovering slower than originally anticipated, the government now expects to collect significantly less revenue this decade than it...
Potential ISIS Operation Shows the Value of Fiscal Space
Recent events in Iraq and Syria have raised the prospect of expanding military operations in the region beyond airstrikes. Gordon Adams in a Fiscal...
Sources of Spending Growth in CBO's Baseline
CBO's recent budget projections reaffirm that our debt problems are significant. Entitlements are projected to grow, as a result of a retiring...