Today, CBO released a cost estimate for H.R. 7321, the Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act, as passed by the House of Representatives last night. We estimate that enacting H.R. 7321 would increase net direct spending by $1.7 billion over the 2009-2018 period, mostly for loans to domestic automobile manufacturers. An additional $7.0 billion in potential costs would be subject to future appropriation action.
CBO Blog
Today (December 5), CBO released a letterat the request of House Majority Leader Hoyer analyzing the budgetary effects of two legislative proposals: S. 3715, the Auto Industry Emergency Bridge Loan Act, as introduced on November 20, 2008; and draft legislation released by the House Committee on Financial Services (and posted on that committees Web site) on November 17, 2008.
Yesterday, CBO released its Monthly Budget Review. CBO estimates that the Treasury will report a federal budget deficit of $408 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2009, $253 billion higher than the deficit recorded through November of last year. This estimate includes $191 billion disbursed for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) during the first two months of the fiscal year.
CBO has been privileged, for the past two years, to have Peter Orszag as its Director. During that time, heworked tirelessly to ensure that the Congress received the timely, high quality,budget and economic information and policy analysis that it needs to address the important public policy issues facing our nation. He alsoexpanded the agency's focus on key areaslike climate change and health care, with particular emphasis on the long-term fiscal threat posed by rising health care costs.
Today President-elect Obama announced his intention to nominate me as director of the Office of Management and Budget. I am therefore resigning as director of CBO and this will be my final blog entry.
Tonight Im giving the Goldman Lecture in Economics at Wellesley College. (Here are the slides from my talk.) The topic is climate changestarting with an overview of the problem and then discussing a range of possible approaches to reducing the risks involved. As Ive noted before with regard to health care, our political system doesnt deal well with gradual, long-term problems. And climate change would definitely qualify as one of those gradual, long-term problems.
Today, I will be delivering the Eighth Annual Marshall J. Seidman Lecture on Health Policy at Harvard Medical School. (Here are the slides from my talk.) The title of the lecture is "New Ideas About Human Behavior in Economics and Medicine," and it builds upon a theme I have been speaking about over the past few months: that just as the field of economics suffered for ignoring psychology for too long, so too has much of medical science and health policy largely ignored the crucial role of expectations, beliefs, and norms.
The 2008 deficit totaled $455 billion, roughly $17 billion more than the $438 billion estimated by CBO on October 7th.That difference does not reflect any economic or programmatic developments; rather, it reflects an accounting adjustment by the Department of the Treasury, which increased the outlay and deficit figures for June 2008 by $17 billion.
In many settings, prizes can be an efficient way of encouraging new breakthroughs.