Rudolph G. Penner is an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute. He was director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1987.
Debt reduction may be consuming Capitol Hill these days, but lawmakers have a number of pricey budget decisions to make before the year's out.
The long-term unemployed just can't catch a break.
From 1979 to 2007, average household income for the nation's top 1% more than tripled, while middle-class incomes grew by less than 40%, according to a new report from a research arm of Congress.
The federal government closed out fiscal year 2011 with an estimated deficit of $1.3 trillion, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates released Friday.
It's easy to read the latest budget outlook from the Congressional Budget Office as further proof that the United States really needs to get serious about dealing with the national debt.
The United States is still set to rack up large deficits in the next decade, but not quite as large as previously estimated. At the same time, economic growth is expected to be modest and the unemployment rate is likely to stay high for a few more years.
Some students will start owing more on their loans while they're in school under a last-minute debt ceiling deal to keep the country out of default and reduce deficits by at least $2.1 trillion over a decade.
We're swimming in debt, but it wasn't always like this.
Commentary: Donald Marron is the director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and a former acting director of the Congressional Budget Office.
Government deficits are the biggest long-term worry of top U.S. economists, according to a survey released Monday.
The number of Americans suffering through long-term unemployment remains stubbornly high, according to a study released Thursday.
The federal deficit for 2011 will hit $1.5 trillion, driven higher by the "slow and tentative" economic recovery and the bipartisan tax cut deal passed late last year, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
Legislation being pushed by House Republicans to repeal President Barack Obama's health care overhaul will add $230 billion to the federal debt by 2021, according to an analysis released Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Since the recession began three years ago, Congress has poured a total of $2.8 trillion into the economy in an effort to spur hiring, get people spending again and prop up industries struggling to stay afloat. While the $858 billion package of tax cuts passed last week was the biggest slice of stimulus yet, it accounts for less than a third of all the money spent since the start of 2008, according to multiple cost estimates prepared by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office over the last three years.
Despite November's bleak unemployment report, some economists expect hiring to improve soon. Mary Snow reports.
Just as the economy started showing a few hopeful signs of improvement -- a brisk kick-off to holiday shopping, fewer people filing unemployment claims -- the Department of Labor reported Friday that a paltry 39,000 jobs were added in November and the unemployed rate rose to 9.8 percent. This news could not be worse for the economy and the 15 million unemployed Americans who desperately want to work.
The country got a little shock therapy last week when the co-chairmen of President Obama's debt commission offered their recommendations for curbing U.S. debt. One of their goals: reduce deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade.
If you've made it this far into the toughest job market in decades without being laid off, chances are you're out of the danger zone.
The federal government ran a deficit of nearly $1.3 trillion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to preliminary estimates released Thursday by the Congressional Budget Office.
Happy New Year! Fiscal year 2011 is here. This momentous day comes just one month before voters head to the polls for the midterm elections, but for many of them, the time is not ripe for an economic celebration.
A new government report quantifies the rise in health care spending due to the nation's growing obesity problem, but says that costs would rise even if America lost weight.
The United States has spent more than $1 trillion on wars since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, a recently released Congressional report says.
What? Really? You don't understand the new health care reform legislation? You find yourself confused? If you haven't mastered the minutiae on all 2,309 pages of the health care reform bill signed earlier this week by President Obama, there's nothing wrong with you -- even experts are having a hard time getting a grip on all the details.
The sweeping health-care bill passed by the House of Representatives Sunday, and now headed for President Obama's desk, promises a sea change in the way that small business owners purchase and provide health insurance for themselves and their employees.
Question: . My wife and I know we should have an emergency savings fund, but with one income we have nothing left to save after paying expenses.
The Congressional Budget Office has upped the forecast for the cost of the stimulus package by $75 billion.
The Senate on Tuesday rejected a proposal to create a bipartisan commission charged with reining in the country's debt.
The U.S. government's fiscal outlook is "daunting," with deficits averaging at least $600 billion a year over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.
When it comes to figuring out what has caused the country's record accumulation of debt, just about every politician in Washington has a theory.
You don't need a Ph.D in economics to know that the government fiscal year that ended last week was ugly for the budget.
When the stock market broke the 10,000 point barrier a few weeks ago, many investors celebrated. Economists have started to talk about the end of the "Great Recession." But many Americans can't see what all the enthusiasm is about.
They're angry and fighting back with full force.
The Congressional Budget Office is now estimating that limits on medical malpractice lawsuits -- reforms favored by many Republicans -- could save the government as much as $54 billion over the next 10 years.
Congressional Budget Office research shows that tort reform could lower health care costs. CNN's Lisa Sylvester reports.
The pace of economic decline in the second quarter slowed at an annual rate of 1%, according to the government's revised reading on gross domestic product. It was unchanged from a previous estimate.
Before I was elected to Congress, I ran a small plastics packaging business in Cincinnati, Ohio, providing products and services, creating jobs and meeting payroll.
After more than six hours of negotiations among White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, talks between House Democratic leaders and key Blue Dog Democrats broke up Tuesday night without a deal on health-care reform.
The fight over health care reform took center stage on Capitol Hill on Friday, as the House Democratic leadership stepped up its push for passage of a bill before the August congressional recess.
President Obama says his controversial health care plan will mean "lower costs and more choices" for Americans.
Reality Check on claim that 119 million people would lose insurance under Democrats' reform plan. Dana Bash reports.
The Senate Finance Committee has crafted a health care reform bill that is less than $1 trillion, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, announced Thursday.
Americans want, deserve and demand health care reform.
Two key proposals to improve access to health insurance could reduce the ranks of the uninsured but cost $1 trillion over 10 years, according to preliminary estimates released Monday by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy will start growing in the second half of 2009, but it will be several years before the positive effects of a turnaround will be felt, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday.
Is it finally time to buy homebuilder stocks? The basic math of the real estate market is now working in favor of an industry that, believe it or not, has done a remarkable job paring costs and harboring its financial strength for the recovery that's now dawning.
Throughout our history, each generation made sacrifices to better the lives of the next generation. Part of the American dream has included passing on to your children hope for the future and the possibility of prosperity.
The U.S. budget deficit in 2009 is projected to spike to between $1.67 trillion and $1.85 trillion, according to estimates released Friday by the Congressional Budget Office.
President Obama is in danger of losing the biggest stick in his foreclosure prevention arsenal.
The prices of real estate, stocks and many commodities continue to plummet this year.
When a debate as important -- both in terms of policy and politics -- as the one currently rolling around our nation regarding the president's "stimulus" plan takes place, emotion often takes precedence over fact.
Americans' retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months, Congress' top budget analyst estimated Tuesday
You might think that being part of a presidential candidate's brain trust would mean high-level meetings in plush quarters with good food.
Even as Washington nears agreement on measures to minimize the effects of a recession, there is little agreement on how much such moves would boost the economy.
Money Magazine: The Road Aheadupdated: Thu Mar 01 2007 00:01:00
You couldn't have seen it coming. Not like this anyway. This year the oldest of the baby boomers will turn 61, just inches away from being eligible to collect their first Social Security check. Rou...
A bill to enact the 9/11 Commission recommendations -- one of the first bills passed by the new Democratic-led House of Representatives -- will cost $21 billion over five years if enacted into law, congressional budget officials said Friday.
A report from the Congressional Budget Office says President Bush's plan for a troop increase in Iraq could cost up to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment.
President Bush's tax cuts offered the biggest benefits to families in the highest income categories, according to a study cited in a published report Monday.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Say you and your spouse want to relocate to a new city.
So you found a new job and it pays more than your old one.
Hurricane Katrina will cost the nation 400,000 jobs by the end of the year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. To put that in perspective, employment in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast totaled about 775,000 at the end of 2004.
The budget deficit will be about $331 billion this year, down from March's estimate of $365 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said in a new forecast released Monday morning.
Wealthier Americans should take the hit to bolster Social Security, according to a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted over the weekend and released Tuesday.
The federal budget deficit is projected to hit $368 billion in fiscal 2005, bigger than earlier forecasts, but then decline to $295 billion in 2006, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Many who say Social Security is in crisis suggest overhauling the system by partially privatizing it, allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security taxes in personal investment accounts.
In a report released Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revised its projection for the country's budgetary shortfalls, lowering its previous forecast for fiscal years 2004 and 2005 but raising its estimates for cumulative 10-year deficits by $281 billion.
Early on Thursday morning last week, Republican congressional staffers began receiving telephone calls from journalists asking about the new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
President Bush said Friday the news that his Medicare overhaul would cost significantly more than expected would require lawmakers to be careful with spending.
Business 2.0: A Surplus of Red Inkupdated: Sat Nov 01 2003 00:01:00
The Congressional Budget Office's first review for the 2004 fiscal year will likely spotlight the ballooning federal deficit. Economists expect the CBO's analysis to show that the budget gap will h...
You'd have to have a deficit of the attention kind to have missed the recent news that the U.S. government is again solidly in the red. Headlines blared that the federal budget deficit will swell t...
In recent years, fiscal restraint and balanced budgets were perceived to be the ultimate measures of good government. The government ran a budget surplus from 1998 to 2000. Overnight, all that has ...
Wanna hear some good news about the economy? Then stop reading. Because what follows is one more reason to crawl into bed and dream of 1999.
There they go again. Talking about new initiatives for health insurance. Making plans to spend billions on schools. Drafting proposals to replace municipal water systems and decrepit bridges. Float...
There hasn't been much to like about the budget showdown between the Republican Congress and the Clinton White House--unless you're a connoisseur of cheap theatrics, schoolyard gamesmanship, and wh...
The biggest programs seem untouchable. Everybody wants to dump foreign aid, which would make barely a dent in the deficit.
AMERICAN business may be rapidly metamorphosing from the auto age to the information age, but the federal government seems stuck somewhere in the cotton era. The Agriculture Department, to cite one...
DO YOU remember David Stockman's famous warning that America was in danger of having ''$200 billion deficits as far as the eye can see''? That prediction was supposed to shock us when, as Ronald Re...
Money Magazine: Ya gotta be kidding updated: Thu Jul 01 1993 00:01:00
Choose sides, then duck. May's Editor's Notes reported that House Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski had reacted negatively to your letters urging repeal of the new 20% withholding tax on cer...
Get ready for Act II of Clintonomics -- the First Lady's task force on health care. A key question: Will Hillary emulate Hammurabi, the Babylonian ruler who slapped on history's first-recorded pric...
YOU SAY you've heard enough about the federal budget deficit? You know it will come to roughly $314 billion in fiscal 1992? You know the national debt grew from nearly $1 trillion ten years ago to ...
MOST Americans don't think they need an economist to tell them the nation has been underinvesting in its infrastructure. They can feel the evidence when they bounce through a pothole and see it in ...
1% BILL BYRNE'S life story is an American classic -- humble farm boy makes good by working his tail off. He grew up on a 240-acre hog farm in Pocahontas County, Iowa, the oldest of six, and put in ...
Read the lips of the major presidential candidates and you won't learn much about how they'd tackle the enormous budget deficit if they are elected -- or reelected. But many economists, including F...
TO MERE taxpaying mortals, the dollars committed to Desert Storm look as awesome as the battle itself. Every time a cruise missile goes off, it's more than $1 million. Scud-busting Patriots cost so...
IS AN S&L-SIZE DISASTER brewing among America's commercial banks? With banks already failing at the highest rate since the Great Depression, both the Congressional Budget Office and the General Acc...
Lip reading will never be the same again. Neither, for that matter, will your taxes. They're going up, all right, but unless you happen to be a hard- drinking, hard-smoking muscle-car owner who pul...
A low-deficit dinner is being prepared and despite wide Republican protest, increased taxes are on the table. President Bush has agreed to meet with congressional leaders for a budget summit, sayin...
Money Magazine: TAX FACTupdated: Tue Aug 01 1989 00:01:00
The rewards of sin tax If excise taxes on the following products were adjusted slightly next year as shown here -- a huff here, a puff there -- the Congressional Budget Office figures that the $113...
Balancing the federal budget is like getting 17 acrobats astraddle one bicycle -- painfully difficult but not impossible. Barring a major recession or a military crisis, projections by the Congress...
CYNICS -- or idealists -- might call them profiles in cowardice. Both George Bush and Michael Dukakis promise that as President they would make deficit reduction their No. 1 economic priority. But ...
A fellow could get a touch of cognitive dissonance brooding over the material in Trends in Family Income: 1970-1986, the latest unsnappily titled publication of the Congressional Budget Office. The...
WHEN FORTUNE PREDICTED slow growth in its 18-month forecast at the beginning of the year, oil prices were $27 a barrel and heading gently downward. Now that oil has collapsed, FORTUNE has gone back...
Half-baked as it is, Jerry Brown's flat tax idea has provided the single most useful economic proposal of the presidential campaign so far. Why not get rid of the rat's nest that is the Internal Re...
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