Nov 20, 2019
Factchecking and Live-Tweeting the Democratic Presidential Primary Debates
Tonight's Democratic presidential primary debate marks the fifth round of debates of the 2020 campaign and will surely touch on fiscal...
Blog
Welcome to our blog – The Bottom Line, where you’ll find up-to-date commentary and analysis on the most important news in the fiscal world. Below is a list of our blog posts.
Nov 20, 2019 | Budget Process
PAYGO Tracker: FY 2020
The first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging it deeper. Yet with deficits projected to exceed $1 trillion this fiscal...
Nov 19, 2019 | Budget Process
Upcoming Congressional Fiscal Policy Deadlines
Updated 11/19/2019: Congress did not complete action on appropriations before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, although lawmakers enacted...
Nov 19, 2019 | Other Spending
Appropriations Watch: FY 2020
Updated 11/19/2019: Congress did not complete action on appropriations before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Congress enacted a continuing...
Nov 18, 2019 | Taxes
2020 Federal Tax Brackets Are Here
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has released its tax year 2020 inflation adjustments for more than 60 federal tax provisions. To make these...
Nov 7, 2019 | Social Security
Bernie Sanders's Social Security Expansion Act
This is the third policy explainer in our US Budget Watch 2020 series covering the 2020 presidential election. In the coming weeks and months, we...
Nov 1, 2019 | Social Security
Bipartisan Group Introduces TRUST Act
Earlier this week, Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Todd Young (R-IN), Doug Jones (D-AL), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), alongside...
Oct 28, 2019 | Taxes
Marc Goldwein & Tyler Evilsizer: Moving from a debt-busting tax cut to pro-growth tax reform
Marc Goldwein is the senior vice president and senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Tyler Evilsizer is the...
Oct 25, 2019 | Budgets & Projections
Treasury: 2019 Deficit was $984 Billion
The Treasury Department released final budget numbers for Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 today, showing last year's deficit totaled $984 billion, a $205...
Oct 23, 2019 | Budget Process
The Prevent Government Shutdowns Act Will Not Cost $12.6 Trillion
The Prevent Government Shutdowns Act (PGSA) would establish an automatic continuing resolution (auto-CR) to prevent shutdowns and would put into...
Oct 23, 2019 | Health Care
Could Medicare for All be Financed Entirely by Cutting Defense Spending?
Last week, The New York Times published an op-ed entitled “We Don’t Need to Raise Taxes to Have ‘Medicare for All’.” In it, Lindsay Koshgarian,...
Oct 23, 2019 | Social Security
Why Are CBO and SSA so Far Apart on SS2100?
Both the Social Security Administration's (SSA) chief actuary, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released updated estimates of the...
Oct 22, 2019 | Taxes
Maya MacGuineas: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Made the Debt Worse and Makes Fixing It Even Harder
Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt. She recently wrote a...
Would Medicare for All Require a Middle-Class Tax Hike?
With several 2020 presidential candidates endorsing a move to single-payer health care (Medicare for All), there is an ongoing debate over whether...
Oct 18, 2019 | Health Care
Fact Checking Medicare for All Claims from the Fourth Democratic Primary Debate
During the fourth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential election cycle, former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Indiana Mayor...
Oct 16, 2019 | Other Spending
President Trump Bolsters Administrative PAYGO Through Executive Order
Last week, President Trump signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to identify and propose offsets whenever they propose an action that...
Oct 8, 2019 | Budget Process
Enzi's Proposals Would Improve the Budget Process
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY) has developed a series of draft budget process reforms. As we’ve explained before, the current...
Oct 4, 2019 | Social Security
2019 Technical Panel Shows Social Security Could Be in Worse Shape Than We Thought
The Social Security Advisory Board's (SSAB) 2019 Technical Panel released its final report last week, projecting that under its suggested changes to...
Oct 3, 2019 | Budget Process
Representatives Rice, Barr Introduce Fiscal State of the Nation Resolution
Last week, Representatives Kathleen Rice (D-NY) and Andy Barr (R-KY) introduced a bipartisan bill to make it harder for Congress to ignore the...
Oct 2, 2019 | Social Security
What Would Social Security 2100 Mean for the Debt?
Saving Social Security from its looming trust fund insolvency would significantly improve the overall fiscal picture. Under the Congressional Budget...
