Economics Roundtable

I am testifying this morning before a joint hearing of the House Committee on the Budget and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

The testimony defines “infrastructure” as including transportation, utilities, and some other public facilities. The United States currently invests more than $400 billion per year in infrastructure defined ...

CBO released a new report this morning, prepared at the request of the Chairman of the House Committee on the Budget, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of adopting a capital budget at the federal level. In addition, I am testifying on infrastructure spending this morning before a joint hearing ...

CBO released a new monthly budget review today. During the first seven months of fiscal year 2008, CBO estimates that the federal government ran a deficit of $153 billion — $72 billion more than during the same period in 2007.  Outlays are roughly 7 percent higher than last year, ...

Last week, the LBJ School at the University of Texas-Austin held a conference on the history and future of Medicare, as part of a series of activities to commemorate Lyndon Johnson’s 100th birthday. (The conference was co-sponsored by the Center for Health and Social Policy at LBJ ...

CBO issued a study today examining possible future private investment in new nuclear power plants. The extent of such investment depends not only on possible charges for carbon dioxide (if the Congress adopts climate change legislation) but also on existing incentives provided for such plants in the ...

CBO has released a cost estimate of HR 5830, the FHA Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention Act of 2008. We estimate that the legislation would cost about $2.7 billion over the 2008-2013 period, assuming future appropriations consistent with the provisions in the bill. The bulk of ...

CBO released a paper today on trends in individual income tax revenue. Such revenue has fluctuated significantly since the early 1990s, increasing by 85 percent between fiscal years 1994 and 2000, then declining by 21 percent between 2000 and 2003, and then increasing by ...

Various media reports are incorrectly attributing to CBO a figure (that the average driver would save about $30 this summer) associated with a gas tax holiday. CBO has not published such a figure and the citations to CBO are inaccurate.

This misattribution raises a larger point.  CBO is a nonpartisan ...

CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation have been working closely together to analyze a modified version of S. 334, the Healthy Americans Act. This morning Edward Kleinbard (the staff director of the JCT) and I sent the letter below to Senators Wyden and ...

CBO issued a letter today reviewing a new investment policy recently adopted by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). As part of its analysis, CBO reviewed the assumptions underlying PBGC’s ...