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.
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Will Third Time Be the Charm for Spending Caps?
Legislation from Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) to establish discretionary spending caps may get a third vote this week in...
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States Face Huge Unfunded Liabilities in Their Pension Plans
On Tuesday, March 9, the New York Times reported about how state and local pension funds are changing their investment strategies to improve their...
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Debating Revenue Under Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future"
A month and a half ago, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his " Roadmap for America's Future," a detailed plan to reform taxes and spending...
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Senate Approves Safety Net and Tax Break Extensions
The Senate has just approved, by a 62-36 vote, HR 4213, which extends unemployment compensation and COBRA benefits for the unemployed, along with many...
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Fed Begins Making Reverse Repurchase Agreements
This week, the New York Federal Reserve announced the beginning of a new Reverse Repurchase Agreement Program to reduce some of the liquidity in...
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Mankiw's Problem with Deficit Neutrality
From Greg Mankiw: Imagine you have a friend who has a budget problem. Every month he spends more than he earns. His credit card bills are piling up...
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The Deficit Challenge Turns to Government Assets...
In a blog post yesterday, Donald Marron discussed an additional way for governments to ease budget pressures along with traditional spending cuts and...
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The 90 percent Debt-to-GDP Threshold and CBO’s New Debt Estimates
On March 5, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) gave us a preview of its take on the President’s budget proposals for Fiscal Year 2011 (starting...
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More Analysis of the President's Budget
On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office released its Preliminary Analysis of the President’s Budget. (Last week we offered a few graphs and a short...
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Deadlines Are Made To Be Broken
Here's a good one for you: Using the House legislative calendar as a guide, as of March 10, Congress will have 16 legislative days to enact a budget...
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Senate Should Post Information on Spending
UPDATE: The Coburn amendment was agreed to on a 100-0 vote. The Senate today will consider a proposal from Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) to post...
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‘Line’ Items: Oscars Edition
Temporary Tax Extensions Avoid “The Hurt Locker” – The Senate passed H.R. 4691, a 30-day extension of several expired tax breaks and unemployment and...