Blogs

Updated estimates by a federal agency indicate that spending on health care will rise from 17.3 percent of GDP last year to 19.3 percent in 2019 -- 0.3 percent higher as a result of this year’s health reform legislation and…

The media is buzzing about how House Minority Leader John Boehner and President Obama might be ready to "compromise" on what to do about the Bush tax cuts. From a story by Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery in Monday's Washington…

The Concord Coalition and The Peter G. Peterson Foundation are launching a "Fiscal Solutions Tour" this week to foster informed public dialogue about possible answers to the nation's fiscal and economic challenges.The tour will visit six cities around the country…

The administration, worried about Democratic election prospects, is considering a new set of tax cuts to stimulate the economy. But Diane Lim Rogers, Concord’s chief economist, argues that the administration’s ideas are neither new nor particularly well thought-out. While the…

The Obama Administration is now considering a new set of tax cuts, primarily aimed at businesses, to further stimulate the economy. It's reported that a permanent extension of the research and experimentation tax credit is one of these new proposals. …

The federal budget consists of three broad categories: discretionary spending, mandatory spending, and interest payments on the public debt. Congress decides each year how much funding it will provide for discretionary programs. Mandatory spending, on the other hand, is generally…

New federal budget projections paint an alarming picture of the need for Washington to set better priorities and resist the temptation to dig the government into even deeper trouble with more deficit-financed spending and tax cuts. (more…)

One of my Concord colleagues recently relayed the following "old joke" to me, remarking that a fiscal policy issue we had been discussing reminded him of it. But when he said it, it reminded me instead of a different fiscal…