Last month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest Long-Term Budget Outlook. The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson reports: For the past half-century, federal spending has averaged about 20 percent of GDP, federal taxes about 18 percent of GDP and the budget deficit 2 percent of GDP. The CBO’s projection …
Three weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary score of the Kennedy-Dodd health reform bill. CBO estimated that Title I of the draft legislation alone would have added $1 trillion to the federal deficit while only extending coverage to 16 million of the uninsured. The score sent …
In January, President Obama pressed for an $800 billion economic “stimulus” package to turn the economy around. Though the bill largely consisted of increased spending on traditional liberal priorities, the President claimed that it would “create or save” 3.5 million jobs. The President’s economic advisors predicted that unemployment would rise …
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released their analysis of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that had proponents of the bill claiming we could save the planet for just $175 per household. That was the figure CBO estimated cap and trade would cost households in 2020, which “includes the cost …
Even before the Congressional Budget Office put $1 to $1.6 trillion price tags on the latest Senate health care plans, President Barack Obama proposed to cut Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates for various health care providers by an additional $313 billion over 10 years. Those cuts came on top of …
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released a paper: Did the 2008 Tax Rebates Stimulate Short-term Growth? The paper is a comprehensive summary of the best recent literature on the topic. CBO sorts the literature into three categories: Studies that used detailed data about individual spending to study the effects …
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus’ recent off-the-cuff remarks to CBO Director Elmendorf highlight the critical role the CBO will play in the coming health care debate as it evaluates and scores the various proposals. Senator Baucus also demonstrated the pressures the CBO is under, and the ease with which Members …
