With the mid-term election behind us, the current Congress still has work to do. Lawmakers may address a huge number of issues when they return in two weeks. And it all will cost money.

Here is what lawmakers are likely to address in the next two months:

The Bottom Line presents the next installment in our series highlighting our Ten Questions to Ask the Candidates leading up to Election Day.

7. Controlling Health Care Costs. Will more have to be done to control federal health care costs? If so, what? Health care costs remain the biggest threat to our fiscal health in the long run and are set to continue growing faster than the economy.

Fixing the Nation's Four-Tranche Universal Health System

They Did It!

Kudos to the Esquire Budget Commission for releasing a budget plan this morning! Former Senators Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Bob Packwood and John Danforth came up with a plan to balance the budget by 2020. And their discussion was civil! Here's a table for how they would stabilize the debt.

CRFB has just launched a new policy paper series entitled "Let's Get Specific." The Let's Get Specific series is intended to help focus national attention on finding specific solutions to our mounting fiscal challenges and on understanding the types of changes we will have to make. Not all the policies in this series are necessarily endorsed by all members of CRFB.

With the fiscal debt clock ticking, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget yesterday brought together members of Congress and other fiscal experts to talk about "Let's Get Specific: Ways to Fix the Federal Budget". Facing a soaring federal debt, it's difficult to discuss how to close the fiscal gap without getting specific, CRFB Co-Chairman Bill Frenzel told those attending the half-day session.

Today the Republican caucus of the House of Representatives released an agenda-setting document as a part of its strategy to take control of the House in November. The “Pledge to America” covers five broad topics: jobs and the economy; reducing federal spending and the size of government; repealing and replacing the health care reform law; congressional reform; and homeland and national security.

An interesting exchange was recently published on progressive ways to think about deficit reduction, especially when it comes to the “big three entitlement programs”. Isabel Sawhill and Greg Anrig debated on how to go about medium- and long-term debt reduction in a manner that would be amenable to many progressives.

If lawmakers extended various current policies, as opposed to letting them expire as they are set to under current law, what would happen to economic growth over the coming decade?

We've spoken a lot about Social Security reform the last few days, in the context of solvency, sustainability, and direct effects on the budget. But we haven't yet talked about reform in the context of our overall fiscal and economic picture. On the fiscal side, our fundamental problem is the growth of entitlement spending, and this is driven by both health care cost growth and by population aging.