Explaining Analytical Methods
- Report
Financial Commitments of Federal Credit and Insurance Programs, 2012 to 2021
CBO describes the commitments the federal government has made through its credit and insurance programs, including housing, real estate, and student loan programs, deposit insurance, insurance for private pensions, and flood and crop insurance.
- Report
Army Corps of Engineers: Budgetary History and Projections
CBO examines trends in funding and spending for the Army Corps of Engineers and explains how CBO treats that agency’s activities in its baseline and cost estimates.
- Report
FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund: Budgetary History and Projections
CBO examines trends in funding and spending for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Disaster Relief Fund and provides information about how CBO treats that program in its baseline and cost estimates.
- Report
Federal Financial Support for Public Transportation
In this report, CBO describes public transportation in the United States and explains how the federal government supports mass transit. The report also explains how financing subsidies provide additional federal support.
- Working Paper
Fiscal Substitution in Spending for Highway Infrastructure: Working Paper 2021-13
CBO provides estimates of how much state and local governments that receive federal grants for highway capital projects substitute that funding for their own spending on highway capital.
- Working Paper
CBO's Oil Price Forecasting Record: Working Paper 2020-03
Oil prices are one of the economic variables that underlie CBO's projections of the federal budget. This paper describes CBO's methods to forecast oil prices and evaluates the quality of the agency's historical forecasts.
- Report
Issues and Options for a Tax on Vehicle Miles Traveled by Commercial Trucks
CBO examines choices lawmakers would face in establishing a federal tax on the miles traveled by commercial trucks—including choices about the tax base, rate structure, and implementation methods—and illustrates how such a tax might affect the federal budget.
- Report
Federal Support for Financing State and Local Transportation and Water Infrastructure
Sixty percent of state and local investment in transportation and water infrastructure is financed using tools that impose costs on the federal government: tax-exempt bonds, tax credit bonds, state banks, and direct federal credit programs.
- Working Paper
Fiscal Substitution of Investment for Highway Infrastructure: Working Paper 2018-08
The federal government provides grants to state and local governments for their transportation infrastructure. State and local governments use some of those funds to replace funds that they would have provided for such investment.