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    Note to Congress: Swear Off Phony War Savings, Now and Forever

    Though the idea has been thoroughly discredited, the President and Members of Congress are still considering a large, thoroughly bogus “savings” option to help cover their profligate spending: They intend to claim war spending that was never going to be spent as “savings”—and then spend it on something else. It is one of the most embarrassingly transparent gimmicks in town, and it should be shunned permanently. The alleged “savings” come from a reduction in estimated projected spending on U.S. activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. But those activities—termed Overseas Contingency Operations … More

    Federal Spending on Health Care Doubles in the Next Decade

    The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its Budget and Economic Outlook for years 2012 to 2022 yesterday, and as Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen shows, the numbers add up to a dismal fiscal future. As the government continues its fiscal irresponsibility, 2012 will be the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits. This trend is on track to continue as a result of increasing federal spending on health care, which will more than double between 2012 and 2022. The CBO estimates that by 2022, the government will spend $1.8 trillion on health care, … More

    Morning Bell: Federal Workers Overpaid, and CBO Agrees

    Here’s some news that federal bureaucrats in Washington — and indeed around the country — don’t want to hear: According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released this week, federal workers are paid higher than their private-sector counterparts. The “alarming news” hit the national media yesterday, but there’s a funny thing about the report. None of it is really “news” — in fact, The Heritage Foundation long ago uncovered the truth about federal pay. The CBO’s report this week was spurred in part by two years of work on … More

    Budget Outlook Getting Worse, CBO Report Shows

    The figures released today by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) once again reflect the magnitude of the federal government’s fiscal problem and the urgent need for Congress and the President to address it. Some key points: The 2012 deficit, projected at $1.079 trillion, represents the fourth consecutive year of deficits exceeding $1 trillion. Debt held by the public today is $11.2 trillion, or 72.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly three-fourths of total economic output. This year’s $3.6 trillion in spending is 23.2 percent of GDP—nearly one-fourth the size of … More

    CBO Sets the Record Straight on Federal Pay

    The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report yesterday showing that federal employees receive substantially more compensation than similarly skilled workers in the private sector. National media, from The New York Times to National Public Radio, reported this “news.” The CBO report was spurred in part by two years of work conducted by The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on federal compensation. We have repeatedly argued that the average federal employee makes more than similar private-sector workers and that Congress can cut costs by reducing this premium. … More

    What CBO Says About Raising Eligibility Ages for Medicare, Social Security

    Dark clouds hover over the nation’s finances and threaten a perfect storm of massive debt and crushing taxation unless Congress starts acting—soon. Washington must demonstrate that it is serious about reining in ever-rising spending and reducing annual deficits. Passing commonsense reforms to our major entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security), the main drivers of future spending and annual deficits, is crucial. As the population ages and health care costs rise, spending on entitlements is projected to more than double by 2050, as this Heritage Budget Chart Book chart shows. … More

    Federal Accounting May Understate Costs of Solyndra-style Programs

    The accounting methodology used to measure the cost to taxpayers of federal loan guarantee programs such as the one that financed defunct solar company Solyndra may dramatically understate the programs’ financial risk to taxpayers. Simply put, the federal government ignores administrative costs and the risks of borrowers defaulting on their obligations. Under the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, the cost of federal financing is measured according to a discounted rate based on the cost of lending Treasury securities. That includes the cost of average losses from loan defaults, but … More

    What’s Going on Inside the CBO’s Recent Income Distribution Analysis?

    On October 25, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published an analysis of changes in the distribution of household income between 1979 and 2007. CBO argues that the 62 percent gain in average household income over this 28-year period mostly went to households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution, where average income grew by 65 percent. Average household income in the top 1 percent of the distribution grew by 275 percent after taxes. Those households in the bottom 20 percent of all households saw income gains of 18 … More

    Income Inequality vs. Wealth Inequality

    Recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest statistics on income inequality. Economists, bloggers and others have been furiously debating their implications. Over at the American Enterprise Institute, Jim Pethokoukis has been bludgeoned by various left-wing bloggers for pointing out that the story of growth of income inequality is much more complicated than the simple version spun by the CBO, and that there exists a considerable amount of evidence that income inequality hasn’t gotten worse since the ‘90s. His arguments can be read here, here and here. One point … More

    Morning Bell: More Bad News for the Obama Economy

    Americans’ confidence in the economy is sitting at its lowest point since March 2009, and in every state in the country, a vast majority of Americans see the economy as getting worse. Meanwhile, the number of people claiming new jobless benefits rose again last week. Under those circumstances, it’s no wonder the White House is doing everything it can to make even the most dismal economic news seem like a silver lining on a very dark cloud. That shred of news came yesterday in the form of the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) mid-year … More