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.
8 Great Ways To Grapple With Gimmicks
In recent years, lawmakers have frequently used budget gimmicks to get around rules designed to maintain budgetary discipline -- if they pay attention...
Senate Budget Committee Hearing on CBO Long-Term Fiscal Outlook
Last week, CBO Director Keith Hall testified before the Senate Budget Committee on the release of CBO’s Long-Term Budget Outlook. Senators questioned...
ACA Repeal Could Add $5 Trillion to the Debt Within 20 Years
Much of the focus on the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) score for repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) naturally has focused on the ten-year...
Shoring Up Trust Funds Greatly Improves Debt
The main focus of CBO's long-term budget outlook is rightly on the unified budget numbers regarding spending, revenue, deficits, and debt. But it is...
New Affordable Care Act Repeal Estimate Still Shows Deficit Increase
For the first time in nearly three years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a new estimate of the budgetary effect of repealing the...
Senator Flake Publishes “Jurassic Pork”
What do earmarks and dinosaurs have in common? Both are extinct, but their skeletons still remain. Last week, Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) joined the...
House IPAB Repeal Vote Would Damage the Long-Term Outlook
Isn’t it ironic, mere days after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warns about our nation’s long-term fiscal challenges in its annual report, the...
Looking at the Long Term in 2015
CBO's Long-Term Budget Outlook, released yesterday, is a detailed 130-page document, filled with budget projections for the next 25 years, along with...
CBO Shows an Unsustainable Long-Term Budget Outlook
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) today released its 2015 Long-Term Budget Outlook, showing a clearly unsustainable long-term path for debt. The...
A Comparison of the House and Senate Trade Bills
The House is considering trade legislation (H.R. 1314, H.R. 1295, and H.R. 644) this week that would fast-track authority for a few major trade deals...
Why Lawmakers Were Able to Extend Highway Spending for Free
At the end of last month, lawmakers passed a two-month extension of the highway authorization bill with very little fuss. There was no discussion of...
Four Gimmicks to Watch Out For
As Congress begins the appropriations process, maneuvers through this year’s Fiscal Speed Bumps, and looks to pay for the costs of new legislation...