CBO explains how it analyzes proposals for single-payer health care systems that would be based on Medicare’s fee-for-service program.
CBO Blog
Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2021 to 2030 is the latest edition of a report that CBO publishes periodically. The report describes 83 policy options that would decrease federal spending or increase federal revenues over the next decade.
CBO periodically issues a compendium of policy options and their effects on the federal budget. This document provides estimates of the budgetary savings from 83 options that would decrease federal spending or increase federal revenues.
The federal budget deficit totaled $430 billion in October and November 2020, the first two months of fiscal year 2021, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Between 1995 and 2017, the balance of outstanding federal student loan debt increased from $187 billion to $1.4 trillion (in 2017 dollars). CBO examines factors that contributed to that growth, including changes to student loan policies and how they affected borrowing and repayment.
In fiscal year 2020, the federal budget deficit totaled $3.1 trillion—more than triple the shortfall recorded in fiscal year 2019. The deficit in 2020 was equal to 14.9 percent of GDP, up from 4.6 percent in 2019 and 3.8 percent in 2018.
When analyzing proposals and programs whose costs depend on whether or not some uncertain variable reaches a specified trigger level, CBO considers a range of possible outcomes and their associated probabilities.
Most Vietnam-era veterans are now retired. In 2018, their average income, including the disability compensation that some receive, was roughly comparable with the income of nonveterans their age.
In a cost estimate prepared in October 2000, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that spending for new health care benefits for military retirees would total about $57 billion over the 2003–2010 period; actual costs over that period were about $55 billion.
By CBO’s calculations, the Navy’s new frigate could cost 40 percent more than the service estimates. If the Navy’s estimate proves correct, however, the frigate would be its least expensive surface combatant in the past 50 years.