CBO Releases 2016 Budget Options
The Congressional Budget Office released a report Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2017 to 2026, with 115 budget options that either increase revenues or decrease spending over the next decade.
As CBO notes:
To put the federal budget on a sustainable long-term path, lawmakers would need to make significant policy changes—allowing revenues to rise more than they would under current law, reducing spending for large benefit programs to amounts below those currently projected, or adopting some combination of those approaches.
To help Congress, CBO's options cover a variety of areas such as defense, energy, Social Security, health care, and others. They also lay out numerous options to increase revenue from various sources. The report also outlines the pros and cons of each option.
The table below highlights just a few of the debt-reducing options in each budget category. See the report for more options.
| Policy Option | 10-Year Savings (billions) |
|---|---|
| Health Care | |
| Repeal the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate | $416 billion |
| Reform Medicare cost-sharing rules | $18-66 billion |
| Increase manufacturer rebate for Medicare Part D drugs | $145 billion |
| Enact medical malpractice reform | $62 billion |
| Social Security | |
| Make Social Security's benefit formula more progressive | $8-36 billion |
| Use price-indexing for initial benefits instead of wage-indexing | $72-114 billion |
| Increase the maximum taxable earnings for Social Security payroll tax | $633-$1,008 billion |
| Expand Social Security to new state and local government employees | $78 billion |
| Other Mandatory | |
| Reduce crop insurance subsidies | $27 billion |
| Stop disabled veterans from "double dipping" in retirement and disability compensation | $139 billion |
| Limit forgiveness of graduate student loans | $19 billion |
| Eliminate the mandatory portion of Pell Grants | $60 billion |
| Discretionary | |
| Limit highway funding to expected highway revenues | $40 billion |
| Reduce the size of the federal workforce through attrition | $50 billion |
| Cancel additional F-35 Joint Strike Fighters | $23 billion |
| Reduce defense to satisfy "sequestration" caps | $251 billion |
| Tax Expenditures | |
| Limit the value of itemized deductions to 28% instead of the Pease limitation | $172 billion |
| Convert the mortgage interest deduction to a 15% credit | $105 billion |
| Eliminate exemption for new "private activity bonds" (read more) | $28 billion |
| Limit the deduction for charitable donations to those above 2% of adjusted gross income | $229 billion |
| Additional Revenue | |
| Set a 19% minimum tax for foreign earnings of U.S. companies | $301 billion |
| Increase taxes on alcohol to $16 per proof gallon | $70 billion |
| Impose a financial transactions tax | $707 billion |
| Other | |
| Utilize Chained-CPI across the federal budget, for both revenues and mandatory programs | $338 billion ($217 billion outside Social Security) |
Check out the CBO report to see all of the options, along with arguments for and against each.
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