CBO Blog

  • Last week Director Doug Elmendorf spoke at Macroeconomic Advisers’ Washington Policy Seminar and at Cornell University.

  • CBO is excited to announce the launch of its YouTube channel! We will post videos of Congressional testimonies, press briefings, and other events involving CBO.

  • The federal government ran a budget deficit of $589 billion for the first 11 months of fiscal year 2014, CBO estimates—$166 billion less than the shortfall recorded over the same period last year.

  • CBO projects that interest payments on the federal debt will more than triple under current law over the next decade. What accounts for that large increase?

  • Conditions in the labor market have improved notably in recent quarters, but a significant amount of slack in the economy remains. CBO projects that ongoing gains in employment over the next few years will largely eliminate that slack.

  • How do CBO's projections of federal receipts and expenditures in the national income and product accounts compare with CBO's baseline projections of revenues and outlays in the federal budget?

  • CBO anticipates that the economy will grow slowly this year and then at a faster but still moderate pace over the next few years, driven largely by stronger growth in business investment, consumer spending, and residential investment.

  • The deficit this year will be $506 billion, CBO estimates, about $170 billion lower than the deficit in 2013. After a weak first half of this year, CBO expects economic growth to pick up and the unemployment rate to continue to fall.

  • Director Doug Elmendorf spoke to the press about CBO's latest budget and economic projections. His remarks and slides are included in this blog post.

  • CBO issues one of its regular reports that provides estimates of the caps on discretionary budget authority for each fiscal year through 2021. By CBO’s estimate, appropriations for fiscal year 2014 have not exceeded those caps.