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.
Round 2: The Conferees Convene
The second meeting of the budget conference committee will happen today at 10 AM Eastern time. The conferees do not have a lot of time, as their...
CEPR Proposes a Financial Transaction Fee for Sequester Offset
What to do about sequestration remains one of the most important questions before the budget conference, and while replacing at least part of the...
Offsetting the Defense Sequester
Replacing the sequester will be an important item on the conference committee's agenda, and it may also be the most difficult. Right now, the two...
No, Actually, the Fiscal Gap Has Not Fallen by 8 Percentage Points
Last week, at a breakfast with David Wessel and Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal, Council of Economic Advisers chair Jason Furman made the case...
Line Items: Veterans Day Edition
Saluting Service – Today we salute those who have served the United States in the military with a federal holiday. While many have a day off...
CBO Breaks Down the Generational Distribution of the Budget
When talking about the debt, it is hard to avoid also talking about generational inequity. Many groups, especially the Can Kicks Back, have worked to...
The Senate Democrats' List of Tax Breaks to Axe
It has been one week since the budget conference committee's first meeting, and many are speculating that the committee could realistically come up...
GAO Explains the Debt
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, posted a short educational video explaining the national debt today. In a...
An Insurance Conglomerate with a Shrinking Government on the Side, in Three Graphs
It's no secret that a significant portion of the federal budget is devoted to our national defense and insurance programs like Social Security...
The Tax Break-Down: The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit
This is the fourteenth post in our blog series, The Tax Break-Down, which will analyze and review tax breaks under discussion as part of tax reform...
Social Security Should Be Part of the Conversation
All eyes are on the budget conference committee, which has a myriad of options available to consider as it negotiates this year's budget resolution...
How Close Did CBO Get?
The Treasury Department released its final estimate of the budget figures for FY 2013 last week, with a final deficit figure of $680 billion. Today...