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.

Apr 20, 2018 | Budget Process

Goldwein and Moller: How Congress Cheats with Our Money — and How We Can Stop It

Marc Goldwein is senior vice president and senior policy director and Zach Moller is a senior policy analyst at the Committee for a Responsible...

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Apr 19, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

IMF: US is the Only Advanced Economy With Debt Rising

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a new report yesterday projecting that debt as a share of GDP will decline over the next five years for...

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Apr 19, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

What If Interest Rates Are 1 Point Higher? $1.9 Trillion in Extra Costs

Interest costs are the fastest growing part of the budget, with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projecting interest payments will more than...

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Apr 16, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

More Than Half of Next Year's Deficit is Congress's Fault

The budget deficit will approach the trillion-dollar mark next year, according to recent projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Well...

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Apr 13, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

Maya MacGuineas: Welcome to the woeful world of free-lunch economics

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...

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Apr 12, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

Balancing the Budget Would Take $7 Trillion to $10 Trillion in Savings

The worsening budget outlook means that meeting certain fiscal goals is now much more difficult than it was previously. We estimate that balancing...

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Apr 12, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

Debt Could Reach Record Levels in a Decade

The Congessional Budget Office's (CBO) latest budget projections released this week show how much worse recent legislation has made the fiscal...

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Apr 11, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

Factchecking the Senate Budget Committee Hearing with CBO

At least two claims in Wednesday's Senate Budget Committee hearing with Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Keith Hall merit fact checking....

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Apr 9, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

New From CBO: Trillion-Dollar Deficits Will Return In Two Years

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its latest baseline projections – the first since last June and the first to incorporate the...

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Apr 6, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

Baseline 101: Anticipating CBO's Updated Budget Outlook

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will release its 2018 Budget and Economic Outlook on April 9, which is likely to project sustained trillion-...

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Apr 6, 2018 | Other Spending

Did the Last Farm Bill Really Save $100 Billion?

The 2014 farm bill is set to expire on September 30, at which point lawmakers will need to renew and perhaps reform farm subsidy and nutrition...

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Apr 5, 2018 | Other Spending

The Omnibus Spent More than Either Side Asked For

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (BBA) increased this year's discretionary spending caps by a whopping $143 billion, paving the way for a 13 percent...

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Mar 29, 2018 | Budgets & Projections

Omnibus Spends $110 Billion Above New Budget Caps

Last week's omnibus spending bill enacted a 13 percent increase in base appropriations, spending virtually all of the additional $143 billion allowed...

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Mar 29, 2018 | Budget Process