Does Entitlement Spending Constitute 71 Percent of the Budget?

The recent release of the final Monthly Treasury Statement from the Treasury Department shows that net interest costs totaled $882 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024. The Monthly Treasury Statement...

Marc Goldwin is senior vice president and senior policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, an excerpt of which is below...

Based in part on new data from the Congressional Budget Office, this piece shows: The estimated federal cost of student loans issued between 2015 and 2024 has increased by $340 billion – from a projected gain of $135 billion in the 2014 baseline to an expected loss of $205 billion in the 2024 baseline. Much of the cost increase can be explained by the expansion and increased enrollment in income-driven repayment (IDR). In forward projections, graduate school loans are now nearly as subsidized as undergraduate loans and make up half of the cost of newly issued student loans. Reforming graduate loans to be cost-neutral would generate over $100 billion in deficit reduction over the next decade.