Estimates of the Cost of Federal Credit Programs
The federal government supports some private activities by providing credit assistance to individuals and businesses. CBO estimates the lifetime costs that are projected to be incurred by those federal credit programs, showing two kinds of estimates: estimates that were created by following procedures prescribed by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (FCRA), most of which were produced by other agencies; and estimates newly produced by CBO that account for the market value of the government’s obligations, which are called fair-value estimates. A primer about how CBO produces fair-value estimates explains how differences between the FCRA and fair-value approaches affect estimates of the cost of federal credit programs.