Budget News - GovBudget.com

Recent Budget News (see Approps.com for current appropriation news):

Upcoming: Fri, Jan 17, 2025: Budget and Economic Outlook: 2025-2035 – CBO
Upcoming: Wed, Dec 18, 2024: Current View of the Economy – CBO
Monday, Dec 16, 2024
Thurs, Dec 12, 2024: Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2025 to 2034 – CBO
“CBO periodically issues a compendium of policy options and their estimated effects on the federal budget. This report presents 76 options for altering spending or revenues to reduce federal budget deficits over the next decade.”
Fri, Dec. 6, 2024:
Fact Sheet: Trump’s Impoundment–Uninformed & Unconstitutional – HseAppropsDems
Fri, Dec 6, 2024: GOP leadership convenes to talk reconciliation–one bill or two– Politico
Thurs, Dec 5, 2024: An Evaluation of CBO’s Projections of Deficits and Debt ’84-’23 – CBO; Musk, Ramaswamy have few answers for tough budget questions from GOP – The Hill
Tues, Nov 12, 2024: Trump win sets up GOP battle between deficit hawks, tax cutters – Hill
Fri, Nov 8, 2024: Budget Summary for FY 2024 – CBO
Fri, Nov 8, 2024: US Fiscal Health Risks Increase After Trump Election – Moody’s
Thurs, Oct 24, 2024: The Intersection of Legislative Drafting and Federal Budgeting – CBO
Fri, Oct 18, 2024: Joint Statement on Budget Results for FY ’24 – OMB-Treasury
Wed, Oct 16, 2024: Climate Change, Disaster Risk, and Homeowner’s Insurance–CBO
Fri, Oct 4, 2024: An Analysis of the President’s 2025 Budget–CBO
Wed, Oct 2, 2024: Budget Estimates of Harris and Trump proposals–Penn Wharton
Mon, Sept 30, 2024: Respected CBO staffer retires after nearly a half-century–Roll Call
Wed, Sept 25, 2024: Bipartisan Fiscal Forum Discusses Debt on Houses Floor–CRFB
Thurs, July 25, 2024: Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations for FY’24–CBO
Tues, July 23, 2024: Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Budget and Economy–CBO
Fri, July 19, 2024: President’s Mid-Session Review, FY 2025–OMB
Tues, July 9, 2024: Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024-34–CBO
Thurs, June 27, 2024: Discretionary Spending Proposals in the President’s 2025 Budget–CBO
Tues, June 18, 2024: The Congressional Budget Office released its Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034. The Update increased the projected FY 2024 deficit from $1.6 trillion to $1.99 trillion, due primarily to executive actions projected to reduce student loan repayments, changes in deposit insurance recoveries, enactment of the emergency foreign aid supplemental, and increased Medicaid outlays. Additional highlights (with our parenthetical notes):
- Budget deficit: $1.99 trillion in ’24 growing to $2.8 trillion in ’34 (but higher still if the 2017 tax cuts are extended without budgetary offsets).
- In 2034, the deficit equals 6.9% of GDP; by comparison, the avg. for the last 50 yrs. is 3.7%.
- Debt held by the public as % of GDP: 99% of GDP in ’24 increasing to 122% in ’34 (but higher still if the 2017 tax cuts are extended without budgetary offsets).
- Debt held by the public in 2034 projected to be $51 trillion (but higher still if the 2017 tax cuts are extended without budgetary offsets).
- Outlays: $6.9 trillion in ’24 growing to $10.3 trillion in ’34–due to rising interest costs, and Social Security and Medicare benefits increasing w/ aging of the population and rising healthcare costs.
- Revenues: $4.9 trillion in ’24 (outyear projections are unreliable until Congress decides whether and how to extend the 2017 tax cuts).
- Interest costs as a percent of GDP are higher than at any point since OMB began reporting; beginning in 2025, interest costs will exceed outlays for defense programs and for nondefense programs. By 2034, interest will account for one-sixth of all federal spending.
- Social Security and Medicare growth: “The aging of the population causes the number of beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare to grow faster than the overall population. In addition, federal costs per beneficiary for the major health care programs continue to rise faster than GDP.”
- Immigration reduces deficits: “Deficits over the next decade are boosted by rising costs for Social Security and Medicare. One factor that is projected to reduce deficits in coming years is the ongoing surge in immigration…. that surge decreases the deficit by a total of $0.9 trillion over the 2024‒2034 period compared with what would have occurred without the surge.”
- Inflation projected to fall from 2.7% in 2024 to 2% in 2026.
- Growth in residential investment expected to rise from 6.2% in ’24 to an average of 9.3% in ’25 and ’26 as increases in immigration and declines in interest rates boost demand for housing.
Tues, May 21, 2024: “The Long-Term Budget Outlook Under Alternative Scenarios for the Economy and the Budget“-CBO
Sat, May 11, 2024: AP reports “America’s debt tops $34 trillion, but a commission to address it appears dead in Congress.”-AP
Wed, May 8, 2024: Congressional Budget Office released its Analysis of Alternative Budgetary Outcomes under various sets of assumptions. “The report includes 10 alternative assumptions—3 about discretionary spending and 7 about policies affecting revenues.” Notably, “most of the individual income tax provisions of the 2017 tax act (TCJA) are slated to expire at the end of calendar year 2025. The expiring provisions affect major elements of the individual income tax code, including the statutory tax rates and brackets, the allowable deductions, the size and refundability of the child tax credit, the 20 percent deduction for certain business income, and the income levels at which the alternative minimum tax takes effect. According to JCT’s (Joint Committee on Taxation’s) estimates, if the expiring individual income tax provisions of the 2017 tax act were extended, primary deficits over the 2025–2034 period would be $3.3 trillion larger….Increased net outlays for interest would add $467 billion to those deficits.” See our Tax and Tariff News page for more details.-CBO
Tues, Apr. 16, 2024: IMF Steps Up Its Warning to U.S. Over Spending and Ballooning Debt–Annual report credits unsustainable spending for U.S. growth; U.S. fiscal stance risks global financial instability, IMF says.-Bloomberg
Wed, Apr. 10, 2024: A newly released Justice Dept. legal opinion will allow Treasury to maintain higher cash balances which could provide more leeway in delaying a cash crunch and potential default when the statutory limit on the public debt is re-set on January 2, 2025-DOJ
Apr 9, 2024: Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley released a letter from the Committee’s GOP members calling on Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse to focus the committee’s attention on the “nation’s dire fiscal outlook” rather than climate change, which is under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Mar 27, 2024: CBO released a report estimating that “the effects on mandatory spending and revenues of laws enacted in 2023 will reduce the deficit by $10 billion from 2023 to 2033—the net result of a $12 billion decrease in outlays and a $2 billion decrease in revenues.”
Mar 25, 2024: Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse released a letter defending the committee’s focus on “the economic dangers and budgetary costs associated with climate change.”
Mar 22, 2024: CBO’s answers to questions for the record following a hearing on the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034.
Mar 20, 2024: CBO released The Long-Term Budget Outlook: 2024-2054 projecting: “The deficit increases significantly in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) over the
next 30 years, reaching 8.5 percent of GDP in 2054. That growth results from rising interest costs and large and sustained primary deficits….Debt held by the public, boosted by the large deficits, reaches its highest level ever in 2029 (measured as a percentage of GDP) and then continues to grow, reaching 166 percent of GDP in 2054 and remaining on track to increase thereafter. That mounting debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook….Outlays are large by historical standards, and they generally rise over the 2024–2054 period, reaching 27.3 percent of GDP in 2054. Rising interest costs and spending for the major health care programs, particularly Medicare, drive that growth.” However, CBO found that, “measured as a percentage of GDP, the deficit is now projected to be 1.6 percentage points smaller in 2053 than it was in last year’s report, and federal debt is now projected to be 17 percentage points smaller. A key factor contributing to smaller projected deficits is a reduction in discretionary spending stemming from the annual funding limits under the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 and from the Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act, 2024.”
Mar 13, 2024: CBO released a cost estimate for H.R. 3230, which would expand the scope of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, to cover major rules in addition to legislation.
Mar 11, 2024: President’s Budget released. See the complete budget at: GovBudget.com/presidents-budget/. Analyses of the Budget: Roll Call WashPost CNN AP Bloomberg NYTimes WSJournal The Hill
Mar 8, 2024: See Appropriations.com for complete details on passage of the 6-bill appropriations minibus.
Mar 7, 2024: House Budget Committee marked up an FY 2025 budget resolution. Text R-Summ D-Summ. President’s State of the Union address foreshadowing some of the budget proposals to be released on Monday, March 11.
Feb 16, 2024: CBO — How Changes in Revenues and Outlays Would Affect Debt-Service Costs, Deficits, and Debt
Feb 14, 2024: Testimony of CBO Director Swagel on The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034
Feb 7, 2024: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office its Budget and Economic Outlook for 2024 to 2034. “In CBO’s projections, federal budget deficits total $20 trillion over the 2025–2034 period and federal debt held by the public reaches 116 percent of GDP. Economic growth slows to 1.5 percent in 2024 and then continues at a moderate pace.
Jan 31, 2024: House Budget Committee hearing on CBO.
Jan 18, 2024: House Budget Committee voted 22-12 to report HR 5779, the Fiscal Commission Act of 2023, legislation establishing a bipartisan fiscal commission. CBO Estimate. The Commission would be charged to “identify policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve a sustainable debt-to-GDP ratio of the long term, and for any recommendations related to Federal programs for which a Federal trust fund exists, to improve solvency for a period of at least 75 years.” The bill would create a 16-member bicameral, bipartisan Commission with 6 Senators, 6 Representives and 4 nonvoting members from outside Congress; each of the 4 congressional leaders would appoint 3 members and 1 outside member. The Commission would be charged with proposing legislation by Dec. 12, 2024, with an optional extension date of May 15, 2025. Expedited consideration in the House and Senate — without amendment — would be required, although Senate passage would require 60 votes (the same threshold for cloture). Approving a legislative proposal would require a majority with at least two Democrats and two Republicans. House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) said he would like to attach the measure to an FY 2024 appropriations bill. All but three Democrats on the Committee opposed the measure arguing it could open the door to Social Security cuts.
Jan 12, 2024: CBO releases annual report on Expired and Expiring Authorizations
Nov 29, 2023: House Budget Committee hearing on proposals for a Fiscal Commission
Nov 16, 2023: CBO’s Analysis of the Long-Term Budgetary Outlook
Nov 9, 2023: Manchin, Romney introduce Fiscal Stability Act to create deficit commission
Nov 6, 2023: The Hill: Johnson embraces deficit fight, setting up battle over Medicare, Social Security
Oct 20, 2023: Joint Treasury-OMB Statement on budget results for FY 2023.
Oct 19, 2023: House Budget Committee hearing “Sounding the Alarm: Examining the Need for a Fiscal Commission.”
Oct 10, 2023: CBO’s Monthly Budget Review for the last month of FY 2023 states that “the federal budget deficit was $1.7 trillion in fiscal year 2023,…$0.3 trillion more than the shortfall recorded during fiscal year 2022. Revenues fell by an estimated $455 billion (or 9 percent). Revenues were smaller than in fiscal year 2022, particularly for nonwitheld income taxes and remittances to the Treasury from the Federal Reserve. Outlays declined by an estimated $141 billion (or 2 percent).”
Sep 20, 2023: House Budget Committee marked up FY 2024 Budget Resolution | Senate statement on resolution
Sep 8, 2023: CBO Long-Term Projections of Gross Federal Debt
Sep 7, 2023: CBO presentations on the U.S. economy
July 27, 2023: CBO Director Phillip Swagel reappointed to second 4-year term.
July 26, 2023: CBO released An Update to the Economic Outlook: 2023-2025. In CBO’s latest projections, economic growth slows and then picks up over the 2023–2025 period. That initial slowdown in economic growth drives up unemployment. Inflation continues to gradually decline.
Jun 29, 2023: CBO released 2023 Long-Term Projections for Social Security: “In CBO’s projections, spending for Social Security increases relative to GDP over the next 75 years, and the gap between outlays and revenues widens. If combined, the program’s trust funds would be exhausted in fiscal year 2033.”
Jun 28, 2023: CBO released The 2023 Long-Term Budget Outlook: “The U.S. faces a challenging fiscal outlook in the coming years, according to CBO’s projections. Measured as a percentage of GDP, large and sustained deficits lead to high and rising federal debt that exceeds any previously recorded level.”
Jun 21, 2023: House failed to override Biden veto of resolution to overturn student loan forgiveness rule CBO estimate of the costs of student loan forgiveness; issue may ultimately be resolved by Supreme Court
May 26, 2023: CBO explains the statutory foundations of its baseline and principles for identifying unfunded mandates in legislation.
May 16, 2023: Congressional Budget Office analysis (Table 2) projects that extending the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts, most of which expire in 2025 under current law, would add more than $3 trillion to the public debt.
May 12, 2023: “CBO’s updated projections show a federal budget deficit of $1.5 trillion for 2023. That estimate is subject to considerable uncertainty, though, in part because of a recent shortfall in tax revenues.”