July 2021

CBO analyzed the Administration’s request for discretionary funding and some proposals that affect mandatory spending. The need for CBO to support ongoing legislative activity prevented the agency from completing a comprehensive analysis.

CBO is saddened by the untimely death of Sen. Mike Enzi. We had the privilege of working closely with him when he served as the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. We appreciated the support and thoughtful guidance that he gave us.

The Congressional Budget Office will publish estimates of the budgetary effects of some of the proposals in the President’s budget (which was released on May 28, 2021) on Friday, July 30, at 11:00 a.m.

CBO provides additional detail about its latest baseline projections, which were published on July 1, 2021. The projected deficit for 2021 is $3.0 trillion, $126 billion less than the deficit recorded last year.

CBO projects that if the debt limit is not raised, the Treasury would probably run out of cash and be unable to make its usual payments starting sometime in the first quarter of the next fiscal year, most likely in October or November.

In this report, the latest in a quarterly series, CBO highlights its recent work and summarizes its work in progress.

The federal budget deficit was $2.2 trillion in the first nine months of fiscal year 2021, CBO estimates—$508 billion less than the deficit recorded during the same period last year, in part because some tax payments were due earlier this year.

In lieu of publishing a separate report providing additional information about CBO’s long-term projections for Social Security, the agency is publishing the data that it would have presented in that report.

Congress created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008 to stabilize financial markets. CBO estimates that the TARP’s net cost will be $31 billion—about what it reported in March 2020 and $1 billion lower than OMB’s latest estimate.

If current laws generally remain unchanged, the federal budget deficit will total $3.0 trillion and federal debt will reach 103 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2021, CBO estimates, and real GDP will grow by 7.4 percent in calendar year 2021.