Budget Concepts and Process
- Report
CBO's Cost Estimates Explained
This document explains the updated format of CBO’s formal cost estimates, which highlights a bill’s effects on major components of the federal budget for the current year and subsequent years in the budget window.
- Report
Automatic Stabilizers in the Federal Budget: 2020 to 2030
In this report, CBO projects the budgetary effects of automatic stabilizers—as well as the size of deficits without them—from 2020 to 2030 and provides historical estimates of the stabilizers’ effects since 1970.
- Interactive
Workbook for How Changes in Economic Conditions Might Affect the Federal Budget, February 2020
This workbook allows users to enter an alternative scenario for productivity growth, labor force growth, inflation, or interest rates and see estimates of revenues, several types of spending, and deficits under those scenarios.
- Report
Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: Fiscal Year 2020
CBO reports annually to the Congress on programs whose authorizations of appropriations have already expired or will expire during the current fiscal year.
- Interactive
CBO’s Waterfall Model for Projecting Discretionary Spending, January 2020
CBO’s new interactive tool allows users to simulate the agency’s process for projecting discretionary budget authority and outlays for different types of spending over the course of 10 years.
- Working Paper
A Simplified Model of How Macroeconomic Changes Affect the Federal Budget: Working Paper 2020-01
CBO uses the budgetary feedback model (BFM) to estimate how changes in the macroeconomy might affect the federal budget. This paper describes how the BFM is constructed, how it is used in CBO's dynamic analyses, and the model's limitations.
- Presentation
Budgeting for Federal Insurance and Retirement Programs: Cash or Accrual?
Presentation by Megan Carroll, chief of the scorekeeping unit in CBO’s Budget Analysis Division, and David Torregrosa, an analyst in CBO’s Financial Analysis Division, at the Southern Economic Association’s Annual Meetings.
- Presentation
CBO’s Relationships With Agencies: Communication Is Key
Presentation by Megan Carroll, chief of scorekeeping in CBO’s Budget Analysis Division, at the Budget Line of Business’s Fall Forum.
- Working Paper
A Summary of Selected CBO Reports on Cash and Accrual Budgeting: Working Paper 2019-09
The costs of federal activities are recorded in the budget mostly on a cash basis. Using accrual accounting for retirement and insurance programs would accelerate the recognition of long-term costs and display the expected costs of new commitments when they were incurred.
- Presentation
Budgeting for Federal Insurance and Retirement Programs: Cash or Accrual?
Presentation by Megan Carroll, chief of the scorekeeping unit in CBO’s Budget Analysis Division, and David Torregrosa, an analyst in CBO’s Financial Analysis Division, at the annual conference of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management.