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Last week Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel released a four-month Pentagon review that said the budget sequester cuts would jeopardize some areas of military strategy. Under sequester-level spending reductions, he said, “our military options and flexibility will be severely constrained.”The Strategic…

Congress has begun a recess that runs through early September despite completing no appropriations bills and making no progress towards a budget resolution conference.Lawmakers have failed to reconcile the overall spending levels set by the Democratic-controlled Senate and Republican-controlled House.…

Developments on the budget front last week demonstrated both the difficulty of achieving a grand bargain and why it may not be totally out of reach. First, the difficulty. (more…)

A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report makes clear that the failure of elected officials to agree on a responsible alternative to sequestration’s indiscriminate spending cuts will cause immediate damage to the economy. The report also shows, however, that ending sequestration…

The prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a long-awaited report last week on geographical variation in health care spending. The study, commissioned through the Affordable Care Act (health care reform law), was the government’s most thorough attempt to date to…

A bipartisan proposal introduced in the Senate would provide a more complete picture of the long-term impact of current fiscal policies, including their burden on younger Americans and future generations.Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced the Intergenerational…

WASHINGTON -- The Concord Coalition today praised the bipartisan leadership of Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) for introducing the “INFORM Act,” a legislative proposal that would improve federal budgeting by providing a more complete picture of the…

The city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy on Friday, making it the largest city in the United States to do so. A number of factors led to the city’s current fiscal hole, including outsized pension obligations, a shrinking population, and high…