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.
Maya MacGuineas: Trump’s Bill is Big, But Definitely Not Beautiful
Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. She recently wrote an opinion piece for U.S. News and World Report, an...
How Much Would OBBBA Pay For Itself?
The House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) would add about $3 trillion to the debt, including interest, on a conventional basis. However...
Leon Panetta and Bill Gradison Jr.: Bipartisanship Is Key to Fiscal Responsibility
Leon Panetta and Bill Gradison Jr. are former Members of Congress and a Co-Chair and a Director, respectively, of the Committee for a Responsible...
Senate HELP Committee Proposes $355 Billion in Offsets
Yesterday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee released its part of the Senate reconciliation package, which we...
Mike Murphy: What's your plan to save Social Security?
Mike Murphy is senior vice president and chief of staff at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He recently wrote an opinion piece for NC...
Maya MacGuineas: National debt is a crisis. Congress must take it seriously
Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. She recently wrote an opinion piece for the Dallas Morning News , an...
Keith Hall: Congress’ Scorekeeper Is Under Attack. It Deserves Our Trust.
Keith Hall is a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, former Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and former chief economist...
12-Month Rolling Deficit is $2.0 Trillion in May 2025
The federal government borrowed $2.0 trillion over the past year – June 2024 to May 2025 – based on estimates from the Congressional Budget Office...
Medicare Waste is Rightly Back on the Table
The Senate is reportedly exploring options to reduce Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse as they consider changes to the House-passed One Big Beautiful...
Mortgage Costs Could Rise Under Debt-Financed Reconciliation Bill
A deficit-financed reconciliation bill could raise Americans’ mortgage costs by thousands of dollars per year by pushing up interest rates. The House...
Maya MacGuineas on When Debt Becomes a Problem
Committee President Maya MacGuineas recently took part in a explainer video by the Wall Street Journal, "When Does US Debt Become Genuinely Bad?"...
Income Growth Would Slow Due to Rising Debt
A new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finds rising debt will slow economic growth and result in lower incomes than they would be...