Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its analysis of President Obama’s FY 2014 budget request. CRFB has released a reaction to the score of the budget, praising the President for putting forward a deficit reduction offer that addresses the country's debt path, but warning that there would still need to be more done, particularly on entitlement spending.

Today, the Congressional Budget Office has released an update to its budget outlook from February. With little legislative changes since February, the budget outlook after a few technical revisions shows slightly lower debt levels compared to the previous baseline. However, debt remains on a clear, upward trajectory near the end of the decade, similar to the path in February's baseline.

Update: This blog has been updated to include numbers from the CBO score of the House farm bill.

Sometimes, the timing of things can really work out in Washington. Yesterday, President Obama nominated Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) to be the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the agency in charge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If confirmed, he would replace current chief Ed DeMarco in a move that could signal a policy shift at the FHFA.

Opponents of the chained CPI often propose an alternative index for cost-of-living adjustments, the experimental CPI for Americans 62 years of age and older (CPI-E), which BLS has developed as a possible measure of inflation for the elderly subgroup. On Friday, CBO examined the CPI-E in a blog post, showing the goals of developing the CPI-E as well as some of the flaws of the measure.

Late last week, David Rogers of Politico reported that there will indeed be a "second sequester," or a $1 billion scorekeeping adjustment due to OMB's determination that the continuing resolution exceeded the post-sequester discretionary caps.

CBO's latest Monthly Budget Review (MBR) for March means that we now have budget data for the first six months of FY 2013. The six-month deficit stands at $601 billion, down from $779 billion over the same period last year. For context, CBO previously projected that the deficit for FY 2013 would be $845 billion, compared to the actual FY 2012 deficit of $1.089 trillion.

The Congressional Budget Office has been busy on its blog lately, posting both snapshots of federal programs and also publishing responses to questions they have received from Members of Congress at hearings. Their latest post from director Doug Elmendorf is the latter variety, showing the sensitivity of budget projections to changes in interest rates.

It is a well-known fact that the U.S. spends a sizeable amount on defense, more than the next 15 countries combined, including China and Russia. But the Budget Control Act (BCA) discretionary spending caps will require the Pentagon to rein in spending levels, even if sequestration is replaced.

Last Friday, the CBO released a report showing how much the business cycle has affected budget deficits since 1960. The report shows the effect that automatic stabilizers -- features of the budget that tend to automatically push up/down spending and revenue based on cyclical economic effects -- have had and what the budget would look like assuming that the economy is operating exactly at its potential.