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.
How Would Higher Interest Rates Affect Interest Payments?
Interest on the national debt is projected to be the fastest growing part of the federal budget. We estimate, based on the Congressional Budget Office...
Senate Finance Subcommittee Holds Hearing on the Medicare Trust Fund
The Senate Finance Committee's Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth Subcommittee held a hearing on February 2, 2022, regarding the Medicare...
Ten Options to Secure the Social Security Trust Fund
The Social Security trust funds are expected to be insolvent by 2033 according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and by 2035 according to the...
Ten Options to Secure the Highway Trust Fund
Accounting for the enactment of the bipartisan infrastructure law (formally, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), we estimate the Highway...
The Infrastructure Bill’s Impact on the Highway Trust Fund
In addition to new investments in surface transportation, transit, broadband, energy, water, tax breaks, and other transportation spending, the...
New Report Shows Student Debt Cancellation is Regressive
Recently, Adam Looney, Executive Director of the Marriner S. Eccles Institute at the University of Utah and a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Economic...
Policymakers Shouldn't Weaken Build Back Better Surtax
To help finance new spending and tax breaks, the House-passed Build Back Better Act (and the Senate Finance Committee’s version) includes a high...
Build Back Better Drug Reforms Would Lower Costs
The House-passed Build Back Better Act includes several reforms to reduce prescription drug costs for the federal government, seniors, and the public...
What Does Student Debt Cancellation Mean for Federal Finances?
We've previously estimated that cancelling all federal student debt would cost the same as the outstanding value of the loans, which is currently $1.6...
2021 Inflation Totaled 6.7 Percent
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) today released Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data for December 2021. Based on BLS’s data, we estimate CPI...
Addressing Tax Expenditures Could Raise Substantial Revenue
While the House and Senate each has put forth its own version of the Build Back Better Act reconciliation legislation, the offsets that will be...
Build Your Own Child Tax Credit 2.0
UPDATE (August 2023): We have released an updated web-based version of the CTC model. You can find the model here. As lawmakers continue to debate if...