Papers
View our recurring reports, which summarize and analyze the most important regular federal budget releases and reports.

Maya MacGuineas's Testimony on Pandemic Response Oversight
On June 3, 2020, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget president Maya MacGuineas testified before the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee...

Chartbook: The COVID-19 Crisis and Federal Response
The economic crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic has been sharper and more dramatic than any we have experienced in our nation’s history. Likewise...

Webinar & Chartbook: Unpacking the Next Phase of COVID-19 Relief
The Senate earlier this week passed the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act – the fourth piece of legislation aimed at...

Analysis of the 2020 Social Security Trustees' Report
Today, the Social Security Trustees released their annual report, showing that Social Security faces a precarious and worsening financial situation –...

CBO’s Analysis of the President’s FY 2021 Budget
Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its analysis of the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 budget using its own assumptions to...

Choices for Financing Medicare for All
Proposals to adopt a single-payer health care system – commonly called Medicare for All – have become increasingly popular. Such proposals, which...

ARCHIVE: Budget Offsets Bank
Note (7/14/2022): This analysis is now out of date. We released an updated version of this analysis, available here, which includes updated options...

Budget Resolution Principles for Fiscal Year 2021
The Congressional budget resolution should establish national priorities in a responsible manner. Congress should follow these principles to craft a...

Primary Care: Estimating Democratic Candidates’ Health Plans
Senator Bernie Sanders released a new set of proposals to offset the cost of his health care plan this week. Based on these new proposals, we have...

Congress Increasingly Fails to Budget
The Congressional budget process calls for an annual budget resolution to make explicit the tradeoffs between discretionary spending, direct spending...

Analysis of the President’s FY 2021 Budget
The Trump Administration released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 budget proposal today, outlining the President’s tax and spending priorities over the next...

Analysis of CBO’s Budget and Economic Outlook (January 2020)
Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its January 2020 Budget and Economic Outlook, projecting the return of trillion-dollar deficits...