This morning CBO released the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022.
This morning CBO released the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022.
Recently, concern about the federal budget and about equity between the public and private sectors has focused greater attention on the costs that the federal government incurs to compensate its employees.
In the past two decades, Medicare’s administrators have conducted demonstrations to test two broad approaches to enhancing the quality of health care and improving the efficiency of health care delivery in Medicare’s fee-for-service program. Disease management and care coordination demonstrations have sought to improve the quality of care of beneficiaries with chronic illnesses and those whose health care is expected to be particularly costly.
Raising the ages at which people can begin to collect Medicare and Social Security benefits would be one way to lower federal outlays, raise revenues, and reduce long-term fiscal imbalances. A CBO issue brief released today reviews how ages of eligibility affect beneficiaries under current law and how delaying eligibility would affect beneficiaries, the federal budget, and the economy.
The federal budget deficit was $320 billion for the first quarter of fiscal year 2012, CBO estimates in its latest Monthly Budget Review, $49 billion less than the deficit recorded in the same period in fiscal year 2011. But $26 billion of that difference resulted from shifts in the timing of certain payments because the regular payment dates fell on weekends or holidays; otherwise, the deficit would have declined by only $23 billion.
Currently, the federal government and state and local governments face calls for more and better highways but confront budgetary constraints in providing them. Some analysts have suggested that public-private partnerships might supply at least a portion of that capacity by providing additional financing for road projects and improving the efficiency of a highway’s construction and operation over the life of the road.
The destruction and degradation of forestland, caused mainly by expanded agricultural activity in tropical developing countries, currently accounts for roughly 12 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Slowing or halting deforestation in developing countries is a potentially low-cost way to help reduce global GHG emissions.
Almost three years have passed since the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).