As I mentioned yesterday, CBO’s work benefits greatly from many outside experts. In addition to CBO’s Panel of Economic Advisers (whose members are listed in my previous post), we also rely on CBO’s Panel of Health Advisers to provide expertise on a variety of health care issues. Below is a list of current panel members:
Henry Aaron, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies
The Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Chair
Brookings Institution
CBO learns from many outside experts. Part of that learning comes through our panels of advisers, a Panel of Economic Advisers and a Panel of Health Advisers, which consist of widely recognized specialists on a range of issues. Those groups—whose membership includes previous CBO directors, other distinguished economists, and acknowledged experts in health care—meet to discuss important analytical issues in their areas of expertise and to advise the agency on its analyses.
Congress requires the Navy to issue an annual report that describes its plan for building new ships over the next 30 years. CBO has prepared a report—required under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012—analyzing the Navy’s latest long-term shipbuilding plan, which covers fiscal years 2013 to 2042.
On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court issued a decision that essentially made the expansion of the Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) a state option rather than what appeared to be mandatory for states that wanted to continue receiving federal matching funds for any part of their Medicaid program.
CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have prepared two analyses that take into account that decision:
CBO expects to release two reports related to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tomorrow, July 24th, around 2 pm. One report will present updated projections of the budgetary effects of the coverage provisions of the ACA to reflect the Supreme Court's recent decision. The other report will present a cost estimate for the repeal of the ACA that passed the House of Representatives on July 11th. Both reports will be posted on CBO’s website.
The Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) program has expanded rapidly during the past few decades, and CBO projects that, under current law, future spending for the program will significantly exceed the revenues dedicated to it.
If future government spending on surface transportation infrastructure matched recent amounts, the condition of the highway and transit systems would probably deteriorate. To increase the funding available for infrastructure projects and to improve the selection process for those projects, some analysts and policymakers have suggested the creation of an “infrastructure bank.”
In a report released today, CBO analyzes an illustrative federal infrastructure bank—one that is representative of those in many recent proposals.
In most years, the Department of Defense (DoD) provides to the Congress a five-year plan, called the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), along with its budget request for the coming year. Because decisions made in the near term can have consequences for the defense budget well beyond that period, CBO regularly examines—at the request of the Senate Budget Committee—the programs and plans in DoD’s FYDP and projects their budgetary impact over the long term.
The recent recession has had a substantial impact on income, the amount of taxes owed, and average tax rates. Average before-tax income for all households fell 12 percent from 2007 to 2009 in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, and the overall average federal tax rate of 17.4 percent in 2009 was the lowest in the 1979–2009 period. The changes in average income and tax rates differed markedly across the income distribution.
CBO estimates in its latest Monthly Budget Review that the Treasury Department will report a deficit of $905 billion for the first nine months of fiscal year 2012, $66 billion less than the $971 billion deficit incurred through June 2011. Outlays are about 1 percent higher and revenues are about 5 percent higher than they were at the same point last year.
