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.
Coburn Publishes Wastebook 2014
Year after year, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) refuses to simply give lip service to "wasteful government spending" and has instead called out...
Medicare's Slowdown: A Story About Part D
In a Health Affairs blog post, CRFB's Loren Adler and Adam Rosenberg find that most of the recent slowdown in Medicare's costs is attributable to the...
Maya MacGuineas: Yes, the Deficit Is Smaller. But That Wasn’t the Main Problem.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, wrote a commentary that appeared in the Wall Street Journal Washington...
How CBO Accounts for Anti-Fraud Efforts
Fraud -- along with the closely related waste and abuse -- is too often cited as a big factor affecting our high deficits, even though this is not the...
My View: Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles
Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles are the former chairs of the Simpson-Bowles Fiscal Commission and members of the Committee for a Responsible Federal...
The More the Budget Changes, the More Things Stay the Same
With FY 2014 officially in the book, it’s time to look back at how spending and revenues have changed since the FY 2009’s highest nominal deficit of...
Gleckman: A Return to Fiscal Normalcy but Not For Long
In response to the release of final FY 2014 deficit numbers, Tax Policy Center's Howard Gleckman writes that this year's outcome just returns the...
Why Has the Deficit Come Down Faster Than Expected?
We noted in our discussion of the final Monthly Treasury Statement for 2014 that the deficit has fallen by two-thirds since 2009 after rising by...
Could Arbitration Help Control Medicare Part D Costs?
Medicare Part D costs have leveled off in recent years as pharmaceutical innovation has slowed and a number of blockbuster drugs lost patent...
Update: Falling Deficit is Not a Sign of Fiscal Sustainability
With the Treasury Department's year-end Monthly Treasury Statement having been released, we have revised last week's report today showing what the...
Changing the Baseline Could Mean an Extra Trillion in Debt
Republicans and Democrats do not agree on much, but both parties are talking about business tax reform that is "revenue-neutral," raising the same...
Is the 340B Program Living Up to Expectations?
The 340B Drug Pricing Program, enacted in 1992, gives hospitals and other providers serving disproportionately low-income populations the ability to...