The current trajectory of the Highway Trust Fund is unsustainable. Starting in fiscal year 2015, the trust fund will have insufficient resources to meet all of its obligations—CBO projects—resulting in steadily accumulating shortfalls.
CBO Blog
The federal government ran a budget deficit of $512 billion from October 2012 through June 2013 (the first nine months of fiscal year 2013), according to CBO’s estimates.
CBO considers most leases of medical facilities by the Department of Veterans Affairs akin to government purchases and concludes—as it does in like cases—that the full costs should be recorded in the budget when VA enters into the leases.
By 2050, one-fifth of the U.S. population will be age 65 or older, up from 12 percent in 2000 and 8 percent in 1950. As a result, expenditures on long-term services and supports for the elderly will rise substantially in the coming decades.
Buyers of new electric vehicles receive federal tax credits of up to $7,500. How do the credits compare to the total lifetime cost of owning those vehicles and to the reduction in gasoline use and greenhouse gas emissions from driving them?
Spending on means-tested programs and tax credits for low-income households has grown in the past 40 years because of increases in the number of program participants and growth in spending per participant.
CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting S. 744 would generate changes in direct spending and revenues that would decrease federal budget deficits by $197 billion over the 2014–2023 period.
In a letter today to the Chairs and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Budget Committees, we described the schedule for the rest of the year for CBO’s key economic and budget publications.
The Treasury is currently at its limit on borrowing and has begun employing its well-established toolbox of measures to allow continued borrowing for a limited time. When will those measures be exhausted?
The interest rate for subsidized student loans is currently scheduled to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1, 2013. What would be the budgetary impact of changing interest rates for student loans?