CBO projects that the Treasury will exhaust its well-established set of extraordinary measures—which allow for additional borrowing without breaching the debt limit—as well as its cash balance, between October 22 and the end of the month.
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Previously, CBO based its long-term budget estimates on the mortality rates projected by the Social Security trustees. This year, CBO projected faster declines in mortality rates (and thus longer life expectancy) than the trustees do.
Recently, the Congress has expressed renewed interest in the cost of the federal response to major disasters.
As part of The 2013 Long-Term Budget Outlook released last week, CBO compared lifetime payroll taxes and benefits for the Medicare program and the Social Security program for people born in different decades.
Director Doug Elmendorf discusses the slowdown in health care spending, including significant downward revisions to CBO’s projections of such spending, at a conference hosted by the Brookings Institution.
Director Doug Elmendorf spoke with a group of reporters who gather regularly at the invitation of the Christian Science Monitor.
In 2013, half of the federal government’s spending went toward programs and activities other than major health care programs, Social Security, and net interest.
More than 57 million people currently receive Social Security benefits, and the federal government spends more on Social Security than it does on any other single program.
CBO analyzes the ways two illustrative options for a premium support system for Medicare would affect federal spending and beneficiaries’ choices and payments.
CBO estimates that about 52 million people are currently covered by Medicare. In 2012, payroll taxes and beneficiaries’ premiums covered less than half of the $551 billion that the federal government spent on Medicare.