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Like zombies, more than 50 expired tax provisions came back from the dead last week when the Senate Finance Committee voted overwhelmingly to renew them for this year and next -- without paying for them. The Joint Committee on Taxation…

Competing House and Senate plans to stave off insolvency for the Highway Trust Fund have lawmakers scrambling to reach an agreement before Friday, when transportation programs expire and federal officials say the fund’s low balance will trigger payment delays and…

The Medicare and Social Security trustees sent a blunt message in their latest annual reports: The programs’ long-term costs “are not sustainable with currently scheduled financing and will require legislative action to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers.” In…

The message from the Social Security and Medicare trustees last week could not have been more blunt: the two programs’ long-term costs “are not sustainable with currently scheduled financing and will require legislative action to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries…

WASHINGTON -- The Concord Coalition said today that new reports from the trustees for Social Security and Medicare show the rising pressure the programs will put on the entire federal budget in the years ahead, a problem that deserves close…

The White House has released its mid-year budget projections, saying they confirm that President Obama’s fiscal plan would stabilize the deficit within a few years without short-changing important, growth-oriented investments. The Mid-Session Review, which adjusts budget estimates for recent legislative…

Last year the IRS hung up 544,000 times on taxpayers because the agency could not deal with everyone who needed information -- a practice it bafflingly describes as “courtesy disconnects.” That statistic was troubling enough. But this year the number…

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a mandatory change in the way Medicare will pay providers of hip and knee replacements. The change will bundle such payments so that one fee pays for the doctor,…