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.
Baucus Draft to Extend and Reform Energy Incentives
It's the beginning of 2014, and Congress did not pass legislation to extend the "tax extenders," a collection of over 50 provisions that expired at...
Stopgap Unemployment Benefit Extension Should Be Offset
At the end of 2013, Congress allowed extended unemployment benefits to expire, and as a result the maximum number of weeks for collecting benefits has...
Social Security Trustee Warns About Expansion Proposals
Late in 2013, a debate about Social Security erupted centering around calls from some progressives to broadly increase Social Security benefits at a...
Happy New Year!
We have an end-of-year tradition here at CRFB to take a look back at the prior year. In 2013, we wrote roughly 45 policy papers, budget updates, and...
Happy Holidays
Best wishes to all our readers. We look forward to bringing you coverage and analysis of important fiscal policy issues throughout next year. From all...
Setting the Record Straight on Social Security
Recently, many policymakers and commentators have called for expanding Social Security benefits rather than slowing the program’s costs, suggesting...
Line Items: Wrapping Up Edition
That’s a Wrap – The House wrapped up its work for 2013 last week, passing the budget agreement worked out by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Paul...
An Irresponsible "Tax Extender" Package
Senate Democratic leadership is reportedly considering a last minute effort to extend 55 expiring tax provisions for another year, including a large...
The Sequester’s Impact on Health Reform
The Murray-Ryan budget deal would mitigate some of the 2014 and 2015 sequester, but it actually still leaves the sequester’s cuts to mandatory...
The FOMC Tapers, But That's Not All!
In a move that has been discussed and anticipated for months, the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee announced that it would slightly...
CBO 95 Percent Confident Social Security Trust Fund Runs Out in 25 Years
CBO's Long-Term Budget Outlook contains significant amounts of helpful data on Social Security. However, a lot of the data focus on just the outlays...