CBO Blog

Last Friday, members of CBO’s staff gave a public presentation of an unusual kind: not testimony at a Congressional hearing or a summary of research at an academic conference, but 30 minutes of holiday songs as part of the National Park Service’s National Christmas Tree Music Program.

Transparency is a top priority for CBO. The agency has long been dedicated to clearly explaining its analyses, and CBO has continued to bolster its efforts to be transparent over the past year.

This report projects the distributions of household income, means-tested transfers, and federal taxes under current law in 2021 and compares them with the actual distributions in 2016.

In 2016, members of the reserve component received an average of $12,500 in benefits (measured in 2018 dollars) under the Post-9/11 GI Bill. This report describes their use of those benefits and compares how the reserve and regular components use their benefits.

In June 2019, CBO updated its long-term budget projections, including projections of the Social Security system’s finances. CBO compares those projections with its 2018 projections and with the Social Security trustees’ latest projections.

In its 2018 projections for fiscal year 2019, CBO overestimated revenues and underestimated outlays by 0.8 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively. CBO’s projection of the federal budget deficit in 2019 was less than the actual amount by 0.1 percent of GDP.

The federal budget deficit was $342 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2020, CBO estimates, $36 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last year.

As part of a continuing effort to increase transparency, CBO has improved the section of our website that contains cost estimates with several new features.

In 2016, the military services allocated $25 billion to base operations support (BOS). CBO explores characteristics of bases and the mission of the units they serve, analyzing the relationship between those characteristics and BOS costs.

CBO Director Phill Swagel attended an event at the University of Maryland honoring Professor Allen Schick, who is retiring after teaching there for many years, and spoke about the conflicts that have arisen in federal budgeting, the important nonpartisan role that CBO plays, and the fiscal challenges facing our nation.