I spoke yesterday to the National Economists Club, highlighting some key aspects of our recent Budget and Economic Outlook. As summarized in my slides, I made these points:
February 2011
Migrants’ remittances—payments sent by foreign-born workers back to their home country—have become a significant source of monetary inflows for many countries. As one of the most important destinations of global migration, the United States is the single largest national source of remittances. The flow of remittances can affect economic growth, labor markets, poverty rates, and future migration rates in the United States as well as in recipient countries.
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the economic stimulus package, certain recipients of funds appropriated in ARRA (most grant and loan recipients, contractors, and subcontractors) are required to report the number of jobs funded through the law after the end of each calendar quarter. ARRA also requires CBO to comment on those reported numbers.
This afternoon, CBO issued two letters related to health care legislation:
Wages are a key component of the overall economic well-being of individuals and families. Hourly wages and hours worked determine an individuals earnings, and for most nonelderly adults, earnings constitute the bulk of their familys income. A CBO study released today, prepared at the request of the chairman and former ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, documents changes in the amount and distribution of hourly wages received by workers in the United States between 1979 and 2009.
In most years, the Department of Defense (DoD) provides a five- or six-year plan, called the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), associated with the budget it submits to the Congress. Because decisions made in the near term can have consequences for the defense budget well beyond that period, CBO—at the request of the Senate Budget Committee—has examined the programs and plans contained in DoD’s most recent FYDP (issued in April 2010) and projected their budgetary impact in subsequent years.
In preparing its annual report on the budget outlook and updates to that report during the course of the year, CBO projects revenues from the federal individual income tax. A background paper released today discusses two ways to use information about tax collections to improve those projections of tax receipts: Explicitly using the information provided by recent tax collections to adjust the projections, and basing the projections on multiple years of tax return information.
The federal government incurred a budget deficit of $424 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2011, CBO estimates in its latest Monthly Budget Review, slightly less than the shortfall recorded in the same period last year.