The Federal Budget in Fiscal Year 2020: An Infographic

The federal deficit in 2020 was $3.1 trillion, equal to 14.9 percent of gross domestic product.

How Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage Could Affect Employment and Family Income

This interactive tool allows users to explore how various policies to increase the federal minimum wage would affect earnings, employment, family income, and poverty.

CBO's Waterfall Model For Projecting Discretionary Spending, March 2021

CBO’s interactive tool allows users to simulate the agency’s process for projecting discretionary budget authority and outlays for different types of spending over the course of 10 years.

How Changes in Revenues and Outlays Would Affect Debt Service, Deficits, and Debt

This interactive workbook allows users to see how revenues and outlays that differed from those in CBO’s February 2021 baseline budget projections would increase or decrease net interest costs and thus affect deficits and debt.

How Changes in Revenues and Outlays Would Affect Debt Service, Deficits, and Debt

This interactive workbook allows users to see how revenues and outlays that differed from those in CBO’s September 2020 baseline budget projections would increase or decrease net interest costs and thus affect deficits and debt.

Workbook for How Changes in Economic Conditions Might Affect the Federal Budget, February 2020

This workbook allows users to enter an alternative scenario for productivity growth, labor force growth, inflation, or interest rates and see estimates of revenues, several types of spending, and deficits under those scenarios.

CBO’s Waterfall Model for Projecting Discretionary Spending, January 2020

CBO’s new interactive tool allows users to simulate the agency’s process for projecting discretionary budget authority and outlays for different types of spending over the course of 10 years.

Financial Regulation and the Federal Budget

To explore how changes to financial regulation might affect the federal budget, CBO analyzed three illustrative policies. The agency found that the policies’ largest budgetary effects would stem from macroeconomic feedback. Watch the narrated presentation.

The Distribution of Household Income, 2016

In 2016, average household income before accounting for means-tested transfers and federal taxes was $21,000 for the lowest quintile and $291,000 for the highest quintile. After transfers and taxes, those averages were $35,000 and $214,000.

How Changing Social Security Could Affect Beneficiaries and the System's Finances

This interactive tool lets the user explore seven policy options that could be used to improve the finances of the Social Security program and delay the exhaustion of its trust funds.