In 1995, the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) was enacted to ensure that the Congress receives information, during the legislative process, about proposed federal requirements on state, local, and tribal governments and on various entities in the private sector. As required by UMRA, CBO prepares “mandate statements” for bills that are approved by authorizing committees. In those statements, CBO identifies requirements that would meet UMRA’s definition of a federal mandate and estimates whether the costs of such mandates would exceed annual dollar thresholds specified in that law.
March 2011
This afternoon, I testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Regulation about CBO's cost estimate for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. My statement summarizes CBOs estimate for the legislation as enacted last July.
What Did the Legislation Do?
This morning I testified before the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health on CBO’s analysis of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the health care provisions of last year’s Reconciliation Act. With the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), we have provided the Congress with extensive analyses of the legislation, and my written statement summarizes that work.
Effects of the Legislation on Insurance Coverage and on the Federal Budget
Today CBO released the fifth of its statutory reports on transactions undertaken as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)—the program established in October 2008 to enable the Department of the Treasury to promote stability in financial markets through the purchase and guarantee of “troubled assets.” The estimate of the cost of the TARP’s transactions provided in this report is the same as that provided in CBO’s most recent baseline budget projections issued on March 18.
Last Friday CBO released its preliminary analysis of the President’s budget for 2012. That analysis included an update to CBO’s baseline budget projections, which largely reflect the assumption that current tax and spending laws will remain unchanged.
About 25 percent of the nation’s highways, which carry about 85 percent of all road traffic, are paid for in part by the federal government. Federal spending on highways comes primarily from taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel, but those and other taxes paid by highway users do not yield enough revenue to support either current federal spending on highways or the higher levels of spending that have been proposed by some observers.
Each year CBO examines many developments that could have short- or longer-term consequences for the budget and the economy. During the decades to come, one such development is expected to be a slower rate of growth of the labor force relative to the average growth rate of the past few decades. That slowdown is anticipated to occur primarily because of the aging and retirement of large numbers of baby boomers and because women’s participation in the labor force has leveled off since the late 1990s after having risen substantially throughout the three decades before that.
Today CBO released a preliminary analysis of the proposals contained in the President’s budget for fiscal year 2012 and their estimated effects on federal revenues, outlays, and budget deficits. This analysis does not include an assessment of the macroeconomic effects of the President’s proposals, which will be addressed in a more comprehensive report that CBO will release in April.
The Key Points
The choices facing the 112th Congress come at a time when the federal government’s debt has increased dramatically in the past few years and when large annual budget deficits are projected to continue indefinitely under current laws or policies. Federal budget deficits will total $7 trillion over the next decade if current laws remain unchanged, CBO projects. If certain policies that are scheduled to expire under current law are extended instead, deficits may be much larger.
Yesterday CBO senior analyst Eric Labs testified before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Seapower and Projections Forces to discuss the challenges that the Navy is facing in its plans for building its future fleet. The testimony focused on the costs and force structure implications of the 30-year shipbuilding plan that the Navy released last year. It did not address in detail the Navy’s 2012 10-year plan, which was released last week.