Mar 29, 2018 | Budgets & Projections
Omnibus Spends $110 Billion Above New Budget Caps
Last week's omnibus spending bill enacted a 13 percent increase in base appropriations, spending virtually all of the additional $143 billion allowed...
Blog | March 2018
Welcome to our blog – The Bottom Line, where you’ll find up-to-date commentary and analysis on the most important news in the fiscal world. Below is a list of our blog posts.
Mar 29, 2018 | Budget Process
House Budget Committee Concludes CBO Oversight Series
The House Budget Committee held its final hearing in its series on oversight of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on March 14. Committee for a...
Mar 26, 2018 | Budget Process
William Hoagland: Congress Faces Challenging Times for American Fiscal Responsibility
G. William Hoagland is Senior Vice President at the Bipartisan Policy Center and member of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He...
Mar 23, 2018 | Other Spending
Appropriations Watch: FY 2018
Last updated 3/23/2018. Congress has completed action on omnibus appropriations legislation. The House and Senate passed the omnibus bill, and...
Mar 22, 2018 | Budget Process
Rudolph Penner: Instead Of Seeking Budget Process Reforms, Congress Should Cut Spending And Raise Taxes
Dr. Rudolph Penner was the director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1987, and he is an Institute Fellow at the Urban ...
Where Does the Higher Spending in the Omnibus Go?
Policymakers recently announced an omnibus appropriations bill to fund the government for the remaining six months of Fiscal Year 2018. The bill...
Mar 21, 2018 | Budgets & Projections
Rising Rates Could Further Balloon Interest Spending
Note (5/15/2018): This blog was published before CBO's April 2018 baseline, which provides official estimates of the amount of interest that...
Mar 16, 2018 | Budgets & Projections
Maya MacGuineas: America's Debt Crisis is Coming – Interest Payments Will Hit a Trillion Dollars a Year
Maya MacGuineas is president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt. She recently...
Mar 15, 2018 | Budget Process
Budget Process Reform Options
With the appointment of the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, focus is rightfully on how to fix our...
Mar 15, 2018 | Budgets & Projections
Interest Spending Is On Course to Quadruple
The fastest growing part of the federal budget is interest on the debt – payments made to service previous borrowing. While interest had already...