Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution focused on the importance of Medicare reform in testimony to both the Senate and House budget committees last week, suggesting that the program should shift to a "premium support" model beginning in 2018.Under such…
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a useful report presenting more than 100 spending and revenue options for deficit reduction.Of the 38 options discussed for discretionary spending, about a third involve defense. With mandatory programs, the CBO said, policymakers…
Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf laid out four simple observations about the federal budget in a recent presentation to the National Association for Business Economics.First, on the government’s current path the gap between spending and revenues would persist even…
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns in a new report that delay in raising the debt limit could negatively impact markets and borrowing costs.The debt limit does not constrain the ability of the government to run deficits, but its ability…
