April 2010

  • Colleges and universities enjoy a variety of federal tax preferences that are designed to support a broader public purpose—the advancement of higher education and research. Not only are institutions of higher learning exempt from paying federal income taxes, they also are eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions and allowed to use tax-exempt debt to finance capital expenditures.

  • To attract and retain the military personnel it needs, the Department of Defense (DoD) must offer a competitive compensation packageone that adequately rewards service members for their training and skills as well as for the rigors of military life, particularly the prospect of wartime deployment. This morning CBO senior analyst Carla Tighe Murray testified before the Senate Armed Services Committees Subcommittee on Personnel to discuss compensation for members of the armed forces.

  • This afternoon I participated in a panel discussion about “Fiscal Strategies after the Global Crisis” at the International Monetary Fund. My short presentation focused on some familiar themes:

    Given current law and certain possible changes to that law that are generally supported by the Administration and many Members of Congress, the budget deficit and debt are on a worrisome path—unsustainable in the long run and posing growing risks even during the next several years.

  • Yesterday CBO released a cost estimate for S. 3217, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on March 22, 2010. S. 3217 would grant new federal regulatory powers and reassign existing regulatory authority among federal agencies with the aim of reducing the likelihood and severity of financial crises.

  • Each year, even when the economy is growing, millions of people lose a job for reasons other than poor performance or misconduct. In an issue brief released today, CBO reviews the research on the short- and long-term effects of involuntary job loss for reasons other than poor performance or misconduct on people’s future employment and earnings.

  • This morning CBO released a letter responding to a request from Representative Christopher Smith for additional information on the costs that H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (as passed by the House of Representatives), would impose on households as a result of the legislations primary cap-and-trade program, which would regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

  • This morning I made a presentation to the World Health Care Congress on the effects of the recently enacted health reform legislation on the federal budget. Everything that I said was drawn from cost estimates and other letters that CBO has released.

    I began by reviewing the budget estimates done by CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT):

  • The federal government incurred a budget deficit of $714 billion in the first half of fiscal year 2010, CBO estimates in its latest monthly budget review, about $67 billion less than the shortfall recorded in the same period last year. That improvement stems largely from a net decline of $223 billion in outlays for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), from $115 billion in outlays in the first six months of last year to net receipts (that is, negative outlays) of $109 billion so far this year.

  • The federal governmentthrough laws and regulationssometimes requires state, local, and tribal governments and various entities in the private sector to expend resources to achieve national goals. In 1995, the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) became law, aimed at ensuring that, during the legislative process, the Congress receives information about such proposed requirements, known as federal mandates, before enacting a piece of legislation.

    UMRA defines a legislative provision as a mandate if that provision, when enacted, would