from the Congressional Budget Office
CBO periodically issues a volume of options – this year’s installment presents 121 – that would decrease federal spending or increase federal revenues. CBO’s website allows users to filter options by topic, date, and other categories.
Since 2007, federal debt held by the public has more than doubled in relation to the size of the economy, and it will keep growing significantly if the large annual budget deficits projected under current law come to pass. The Congress faces an array of policy choices as it confronts the challenges posed by such large and growing debt. To help inform lawmakers, the Congressional Budget Office periodically issues a compendium of policy options that would help reduce the deficit, reporting the estimated budgetary effects of those options and highlighting some arguments for and against them.
This report, the latest in the series, presents 121 options that would decrease federal spending or increase federal revenues over the next 10 years (see Summary Table below). Of those options, 112 are presented in the main body of the report, and most of those 112 would save $10 billion or more over that period. The remaining 9 options are presented in an appendix and would generally have smaller budgetary effects.
SUMMARY TABLE OF OPTIONS
ARC = Agriculture Risk Coverage; DoD = Department of Defense; LIFO = last in, first out; PLC = Price Loss Coverage; SECA = Self-Employment Contributions Act; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; VA = Department of Veterans Affairs.
For options affecting primarily mandatory spending or revenues, savings sometimes would derive from changes in both. When that is the case, the savings shown include effects on both mandatory spending and revenues. For options affecting primarily discretionary spending, the savings shown are the decrease in discretionary outlays.
a. Savings do not encompass all budgetary effects.
Data and Supplemental Information
Related Publications
The Deficit Reductions Necessary to Meet Various Targets for Federal Debt
August 21, 2018
The Long-Term Budget Outlook Under Alternative Scenarios for Fiscal Policy
August 8, 2018
The 2018 Long-Term Budget Outlook
June 26, 2018
An Analysis of the President’s 2019 Budget
May 24, 2018
The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2018 to 2028
April 9, 2018
Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2017 to 2026
December 8, 2016
Source
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54667
Full Report
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file=2018-12/54667-budgetoptions.pdf
Director’s Statement on CBO’s Latest Volume of Budget Options
— from CBO Director Keith Hall
Today, CBO released Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2019 to 2028, the latest edition of a report that the agency publishes periodically. The report describes 121 policy options – covering many areas, including defense, health, Social Security, and provisions of the tax code – that would decrease federal spending or increase federal revenues over the next decade.
As deficits accumulate in CBO’s baseline projections, debt held by the public grows to 96 percent of GDP (or $29 trillion) by 2028. In later years, if current laws remained in place, the pressures that contributed to rising debt would increase. To put the federal budget on a sustainable long-term path, lawmakers would need to make significant policy changes:
- Allowing revenues to rise more than they would under current law,
- Reducing spending for large benefit programs to amounts below those currently projected, or
- Adopting some combination of those approaches.
The report is meant to help inform federal lawmakers about the implications of such policy changes.
Most of the options described in the report would save $10 billion or more between 2019 and 2028. The options are not recommendations by CBO, nor do they constitute an exhaustive list. Moreover, the inclusion or exclusion of any particular option does not imply that CBO endorses it or opposes it. Rather, the options are intended to reflect a range of possibilities. The options come from various sources, including legislative proposals, various Administrations’ proposals, Congressional offices, other government entities, and private groups. Individual entries for each option include estimates of how much it would save; a discussion of the basis of those estimates and the largest sources of uncertainty; and some arguments for and against the change. CBO’s website includes a search tool that allows users to filter options by major budget category, budget function, topic, and date.
The estimates in the report could differ from cost estimates for similar proposals that CBO might produce later or from revenue estimates developed later by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. Also, the report does not contain comprehensive budget plans; it would be possible to devise such plans by combining certain options in various ways (although some would overlap and would interact with others).
Source
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54882