CBO’s Projections of Federal Receipts and Expenditures in the National Income and Product Accounts: 2023 to 2033

The federal government's fiscal transactions are recorded in two major sets of accounts: The Budget of the United States Government (often called the federal budget), which is prepared by the Office of Management and Budget, and the national income and product accounts (NIPAs), which are produced by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The federal budget is the framework generally used by executive branch agencies and the Congress; it is also the presentation of budgetary activity that is most often discussed in the media. The NIPAs, by contrast, are not intended to help the government plan or manage its activities. Instead, those accounts provide a general framework for describing the entire U.S. economy.

Each year, CBO publishes projections of federal revenues and outlays for the current fiscal year and the next 10 years. Those baseline budget projections reflect the standard structure for budgetary accounting. This report presents CBO's projections of revenues and outlays for the 2023–2033 period translated into the framework of the NIPAs and their categories of current receipts and expenditures.

The projected budget totals under the two sets of accounts are similar but not identical. Because of conceptual differences, for the 2023–2033 period, cumulative current receipts in the NIPAs exceed projected revenues in CBO's baseline by about 5 percent, and current expenditures in the NIPAs exceed projected outlays in the baseline by about 3 percent.

In the NIPAs, net federal government saving is calculated by subtracting current expenditures from current receipts. When current expenditures exceed current receipts—as they do throughout the projection period—the amount of net federal government saving is negative and akin to a budget deficit.

The projected amount of negative federal saving for 2023 is $1.4 trillion. After 2023, negative federal saving hovers between $1.6 trillion and $1.7 trillion through 2027 and then grows steadily to $2.6 trillion in 2033. The deficits in CBO's baseline budget projections are slightly larger in most years: The deficit in 2023 was estimated to be $1.5 trillion. After 2023, deficits fluctuate between $1.6 trillion and $1.8 trillion and then grow to $2.9 trillion in 2033. Over the 2023–2033 period, the amount of negative federal saving, which totals $21.3 trillion, is projected to be slightly less than cumulative deficits, which total $21.9 trillion.