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.
Messy Appropriations Process Goes Forward
Update: The Senate Appropriations Committee has released its companion CR/appropriations bill package with total funding at the same level as the...
Line Items: Snowquester Edition
After the Storm – Winter Storm Saturn moved through the Washington, DC area on Wednesday and was given the nickname "Snowquester" by the inside-the...
Revisiting the Distribution of Tax Expenditures
Tax expenditures are a frequent subject of this blog, as they are less visible than government spending due to the tax code's great complexity. But...
The Latest Official Sequester Numbers
On Friday, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its latest detailed report of how the cuts in sequestration will be allocated. The...
CBO Updates Estimate of 112th Congress Farm Bills
The last Congress attempted to work out a new farm bill but could never reach an agreement. The American Taxpayer Relief Act, the agreement reached...
The OECD and Robert Solow on the Effects of Debt
As our national debt and deficit continue to rise, a question that continues to be on many people’s minds is how rising debt levels impact the economy...
Senate Sequester Proposals Get Scored
We brought up a couple of weeks ago that there were a number of plans to replace the sequester for either a year or permanently. Now, CBO has given us...
Burwell Nominated for OMB Director
In a move that had been anticipated for a while, the Obama Administration has nominated Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be the next OMB director. Jeff...
Alter: Why Entitlement Reforms Are Essential
Friday at 11:59 PM, sequestration officially began, triggering sharp across-the-board cuts without much progress on bipartisan replacement plan. Our...
Brookings Rethinks...New Revenue Sources
Throughout the week we have been breaking down the new report from the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, " 15 Ways to Rethink the Federal...
Chained CPI Estimated to Reduce Deficit by $340 Billion
We've written extensively on the chained CPI, which represents both a more accurate measure of inflation and a policy change which would result in...
Concord Coalition: It's Not Just a Health Care Problem
We've said frequently on this blog that controlling health care spending will be a crucial part of putting the debt on a sustainable path. After all...