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.
Options for Reforming the Charitable Deduction
The Urban Institute has a new report on the charitable deduction (co-authored by CRFB board member Eugene Steuerle) that details some options for...
MedPAC's Prescriptions for Medicare
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) has released its June 2012 report, detailing ways in which Congress can improve Medicare to better...
Note to Congress: Pay for the Extenders, or Let Them Expire
A POLITICO article reports on an effort underway at the Senate Finance Committee to negotiate an extension of the "tax extenders," narrow temporary...
Targeting Tobacco: The Budgetary Effects of a Cigarette Tax Increase
CBO's latest report details the full effects on the federal budget of raising the federal excise tax on cigarettes. As they would when analyzing any...
Deficit On Track to Shrink Compared to Last Year
Although budget projections had already been showing this, we now have more definitive numbers from the Treasury Department that this year's deficit...
Good News for Health Spending?
Actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services have published a new report detailing their projections for health care spending growth...
Line Items: Zombie Edition
Undead Ends – Recent reports of disturbing behavior have raised the specter of a zombie apocalypse, where the undead overrun civilization. Flesh/brain...
Deloitte Releases Report on the Federal Debt
Today, the consulting firm Deloitte released a report on the scope and consequences of our federal debt. Deloitte, like the majority of researchers...
Introducing CRFB's Latest Long Term Realistic Baseline
With the release of CBO's Long-Term Budget Outlook last week, CRFB has updated the Realistic Baseline to incorporate elements of CBO's long-term...
A Good Way to Limit Tax Expenditures
The Tax Policy Center has released a new table showing the revenue impact of options to reform the mortgage interest deduction. The options shown all...
Things to Consider When Evaluating Tax Extenders
It is encouraging to see the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures hold a series of hearings on the many temporary tax...
The Drivers: Health Care Cost Growth and Population Aging
In our recent analysis of CBO's Long-Term Budget Outlook, we elaborated on how the overall federal debt is on an unsustainable path. Just twelve years...