Blogs

Before leaving for this week’s recess, the House made significant progress on the Fiscal Year 2013 appropriations bills. Last week the House passed the Energy and Water, Homeland Security and Legislative Branch bills. The three bills would fund the budgets…

Last week both Doug Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, urged Congress to put the country on a more responsible long-term fiscal path without jeopardizing the current economic recovery. Their…

The country’s fiscal challenges and their impact on the economy dominated a Washington forum last week on domestic policy issues in this year’s presidential campaign.The program, presented by National Journal and the Society for Human Resource Management, featured three panelists:…

The Congressional Budget Office today released long-term projections that the Concord Coalition said showed how disconnected today’s political debates are from the key issues that must be dealt with to put the federal budget on a more sustainable path over…

House Republican leaders are suggesting the use of “fast-track” legislative procedures to revamp and simplify the federal tax code next year. In remarks last week, however, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp tied the proposed overhaul to an…

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said this week that the nation does not have to “choose between national security and our fiscal security,” but he urged Congress to avoid what he called “disastrous” cuts scheduled to start in January in both…

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released an excellent analysis on the "Economic Effects of Reducing the Fiscal Restraint That Is Scheduled to Occur in 2013." The CBO term “fiscal restraint” has been more popularly referred to as “the fiscal…

The Medicare actuaries have released updated alternative scenarios for the program, providing data and analysis that underscore the possibility that its long-term costs could well turn out to be higher than last month’s annual report from the Medicare trustees indicated.…