This morning, CBO released a new study on policy options for the housing and mortgage markets. The paper discusses the potential for federal intervention to ameliorate the situation, by encouraging and removing impediments to private mortgage restructuring or by providing federal financial support.
CBO Blog
CBO has issued a cost estimate of S. 2191, the America's Climate Security Act of 2007, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in December 2007. We've also issued a cost estimate on a slightly amended version of the legislation that was transmitted to us on April 9, 2008.
I am testifying this afternoon before the Senate Finance Committee this afternoon on the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), crowd-out (that is, the substitution of public insurance coverage for private insurance coverage), and the August 17th directive from the Administration to state health officials (which has generated significant controversy). The testimony is posted here. The testimony makes the following main points:
The U.S. military invaded Iraq in March 2003, and the conflict there has continued for the ensuing five years. In September 2002, CBO published its first projection of the costs associated with a U.S. invasion of Iraq. CBO has subsequently provided the Congress with numerous updates of funding provided to date for that conflict, as well as projections of future costs under several alternative scenarios. Indeed, in part because the Defense Department has never published its own long-range timetable for future U.S.
The Environmental Law Institute and Vanderbilt Law School are holding a conference on several important environmental topics this week. Terry Dinan of CBO and I are commenting on a climate change article written by Cass Sunstein. Our written comment is below.
Comment on Of Montreal and Kyoto: A Tale of Two Protocols
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The Dartmouth health group released a new version of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care today, highlighting once again the substantial variation in costs per Medicare beneficiary across the United States -- and that the higher-cost areas and hospitals do not seem to generate better health outcomes, on average, than lower-cost ones. (On the basis of this evidence, the Dartmouth researchers suggest that health care spending could be reduced by roughly 30 percent without harming health outcomes.
CBO released a new monthly budget review on Friday, which contains data for the first half of fiscal year 2008. The budget deficit amounted to an estimated $310 billion, roughly $50 billion more than during the same period of fiscal year 2007. Corporate tax receipts are down 16 percent (or $24 billion) in the first half of fiscal 2008 relative to the year earlier; those receipts have declined in each of the past nine months.
In a New York Times article this morning, Robert Pear summarizes recent research showing that the gap in life expectancy between high-income/better-educated people and low-income/less-educated people is expanding substantially.
Last week, I gave a talk at Princeton and participated in some classes on health care taught at the Woodrow Wilson School by Bill Frist. Here are the slides and video from the talk. But the highlight of the trip was the classroom interaction with the students. Their intelligence, diligence, and enthusiasm were quite encouraging, and I hope many of them will enter public service in some form and help to address the problems we discussed.
CBO released its full analysis of the President's budget today, following up on a preliminary analysis we issued earlier this month.The budget estimates are the same as in that preliminary analysis, but today's report includes a discussion of macroeconomic effects of the President's budget along with other details.