The Latest

With Congress now in its long August recess after failing to pass a single spending bill for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, speculation has understandably grown over the possibility of a government shutdown this fall. Senate Majority Leader…

The opening debates of the 2016 presidential campaign provided a disappointingly small amount of information on whether and how the Republican candidates might deal with the country’s tough fiscal challenges. At the two debates in Cleveland Thursday, some candidates mentioned…

Praising efforts by the First Budget initiative to get the presidential hopefuls to discuss the federal debt and related issues such as entitlement reform, the Chicago Tribune recently urged voters to help put pressure on the candidates to do so.…

Why should we make improvements now in Medicare and Social Security? “The simple answer is that the two programs can’t afford to pay the benefits they promise beyond the next 15 years or so,” explains Robert L. Bixby, executive director…

National health care spending grew more quickly last year than in other recent years, according to a new report by actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Spending grew by 5.5 percent last year, up from the…

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…

Congress appears once again to have botched one of its key responsibilities: Approving a dozen spending bills for the coming fiscal year in a timely fashion. Many lawmakers, particularly in the GOP leadership, had hoped to put the budget process…

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…