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.
CBO is Pretty Good at Estimating Spending
In March 2016, CBO estimated the federal government would spend $4.06 trillion for fiscal year (FY) 2017 – a number that would increase to $4.08...
CBO Releases 2018 Long-Term Outlook
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its annual Long-Term Budget Outlook, which shows the United States is on an unsustainable fiscal...
How the House Could Meet the Budget Resolution's Reconciliation Instructions
The FY 2019 House budget resolution calls for $6.5 trillion of policy savings over ten years, but the true action is in the reconciliation...
Maya MacGuineas: Rescission Fight About Much More than a Few Billion Dollars
Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt. She recently wrote an opinion...
Did the U.S. Really Spend $7 Trillion on Middle Eastern Wars?
In a roundtable in Minnesota yesterday, President Donald Trump claimed "we have $7 trillion in the Middle East", a rephrasing of his previous claims...
Goldman Sachs Warns that the US Fiscal Outlook is “Not Good”
In a report released last month by Goldman Sachs, Chief Economist Jan Hatzius describes the U.S. fiscal outlook as “not good.” If left unchanged, the...
Summarizing the FY 2019 House Budget Resolution
House Budget Committee Chairman Steve Womack (R-AR) released his Chairman's Mark of the House FY 2019 budget resolution. The budget resolution calls...
Options for the Pension Committee to Consider
As we recently explained, proposals from the Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Plans could include considerable costs. The Joint...
After Tax Reform, Tax Expenditures Remain Costly
The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) recently released its latest tax expenditure estimates. The report shows that despite the 2017 tax law, which...
Medicare Advantage Proposal Reforms Benefits and the Bidding Process
The Medicare Trustees recently delivered a reminder of the importance of reducing Medicare costs. As Steven M. Lieberman, Loren Adler, Erin Trish...
Marc Goldwein on Facing the Future: Federal Investment in Children is Dwindling
Children are getting an increasingly small share of the federal budget, even as we are burdening them with immense debt. In an episode of the Concord...
Gene Steuerle: Why Government Budget Estimates Are Often Wrong
Dr. Eugene (Gene) Steuerle is the Richard B. Fisher chair and Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute and a member of the Committee for a Responsible...