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.
OMB Attacks Improper Payments Again
We talked a lot last year about OMB efforts to improve government efficiency, culminating in the Improper Payment Elimination and Recovery Act in July...
CRFB Identifies $1 Trillion-Plus in Common-Ground Savings
In a release today, CRFB highlighted the overlapping policies between the most prominent fiscal plans, identifying over $1 trillion in commonalities...
Senate Republicans Introduce Medicaid Block Grant Legislation
Yesterday, Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), Richard Burr (R-NC), and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) released a proposal to reform the Medicaid program. Their...
Secretary Geithner on Our Fiscal Challenges
Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gave a speech about the unsustainability of our country's current fiscal path. Speaking at the...
Spotlight on the States: Ohio
Taking a break from all the recent developments in the budget and fiscal policy world, we take a quick turn to our Spotlight on the States blog series...
A Few Interesting Reports from CBO
In the past few days, CBO has released a few documents that might be of interest to budget wonks. The first is a further analysis of the final FY 2011...
Trustees Report Strengthens Case for Retirement Age Increase
Last week, several bloggers, commentators, and columnists went after Al Simpson for talking about increases in life expectancy at birth (since this...
Low-Hanging Fruit for Debt Ceiling Discussions
Update: Check out our release on these "commonalities" here. As Vice President Biden and several members of Congress continue working toward a...
The Other Trustees Report
Last Friday, CRFB highlighted the 2011 Social Security trustees report in a paper outlining the projections and important changes from last year. We...
‘Line’ Items: Playoffs Edition
Crunch Time – The playoffs are well underway in the NBA and NHL. A playoff atmosphere is also brewing in Washington even though the home teams are not...
Treasury Begins Extraordinary Measures
Update 5/16: Today, Treasury has reached the legal limit on how much debt it can issue at $14.294 trillion. Beginning today, the Treasury is launching...
The Trustees Report Is Here
With the release of the 2011 OASDI Trustees Report, there are a lot of numbers to digest, not to mention a few hundred pages to read (if you actually...