May 2016

  • CBO reviews hundreds of bills and public laws for intergovernmental and private-sector mandates each year and estimates whether the annual costs of those mandates would exceed thresholds established in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. Data are available for calendar years 2013 through 2019, and new data are added periodically throughout the year.

  • I am delighted to announce that CBO’s next Deputy Director will be Mark Hadley, currently our General Counsel.  Mark will assume his new responsibilities on June 6.  

  • 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 authorities on a range of issues.

  • For the next six weeks, CBO will continue to collect your feedback via the button on the left side of our web pages. We want to know what you like about our site. What’s useful? What’s missing? What can we improve?

  • The aim of the new search tool is to enhance users’ experience by making information on mandates easier to access, searchable, and more timely. New data will be added periodically throughout the year.

  • In 2014, 16 percent of men in the United States between the ages of 18 and 34 were jobless or incarcerated, up from 11 percent in 1980. Those numbers and related longer-term trends have significant economic and budgetary implications.

  • The federal budget deficit was $352 billion for the first seven months of fiscal year 2016, the Congressional Budget Office estimates—$69 billion more than the shortfall recorded in the same span last year.