June 2024

CBO describes the discretionary spending proposals in the President’s 2025 budget and compares them with CBO’s most recent baseline budget projections, which span the years from 2024 to 2034.

CBO published updated baseline projections of health insurance coverage and federal subsidies for it. The projections are described in an article published in the journal "Health Affairs" and a presentation on CBO’s website.

CBO’s Director, Phillip Swagel, discusses the current budget and economic outlook.

In CBO’s projections, the deficit totals nearly $2 trillion this year. Large deficits push federal debt held by the public to 122 percent of GDP in 2034. Economic growth slows to 2.0 percent in 2024 and 1.8 percent in 2026 and later years.

CBO is looking for new research on the effectiveness of efforts to increase hepatitis C treatment, the costs of such treatment with direct-acting antiviral medications, and the costs of treating complications if the disease is untreated.

CBO describes its initial analysis of the potential federal budgetary effects of policies that would increase treatment of hepatitis C, focusing on two sample national policies that would increase treatment rates among Medicaid enrollees.

This summer, analysts in CBO’s Health Analysis Division will give presentations at the 2024 IQVIA Institute Research Forum in Boston and the 13th Annual Conference of the American Society of Health Economists in San Diego.

In many cases, adding debt-service effects to CBO’s cost estimates would be feasible. Any change to incorporate such effects into cost estimates, and how they would be presented, would be subject to review by the Budget Committees.

The federal budget deficit was $1.2 trillion in the first eight months of fiscal year 2024, CBO estimates—$38 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year.

CBO’s Director, Phillip Swagel, testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Social Security about the significant financial challenge the program faces in the coming decades.