Word: cbo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Well, no need to worry about 2017 anymore. Thanks to the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, the moment of reckoning is already almost here: according to both the budget proposed by the White House in February and projections issued by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in March, Social Security benefits ($659 billion, according to the CBO) will exceed payroll taxes ($653 billion) in fiscal 2009 for the first time since 1984. Payroll-tax receipts generally hold up much better in recessions than do income taxes, but job losses have been so severe that the CBO expects them to decline...
...budget, stimulus package, and bank bailout assumptions for employment and revenue are no longer right, the government's pot for solving the nation's economic problems is already light. The Administration's forecast is that unemployment will average 8.1% this year and 7.9% next year. The CBO estimates are a bit higher. Based on where unemployment stands now and where it will likely be at mid-year, none of those numbers is even remotely realistic. (See pictures of the Top 10 scared traders...
...fair, it is unlikely that this is the route that the president will ultimately take. For starters, the CBO projections, on out years, have a significant built-in margin of error. Still, in an interview Friday, Peter Orszag, Obama's Budget Director, admitted that long-term deficits projected by the CBO "would lead to rising debt-to-GDP ratios in a manner that would ultimately not be sustainable." He was not alone. As soon as the report came out, even Democrats who support the President's policies said that the budget would have to be rethought. "We have...
...Congress and the White House now face a limited set of options, especially as they struggle to maintain the president's priorities, which include more spending for education, health care and energy reform. They can pare back the spending plans, propose further tax increases, or hope that the CBO got the projections wrong and the economy does not deteriorate any faster than already expected. "I think it's easy to exaggerate fluctuations in the deficit projections, which are driven by small changes in underlying assumptions," Orszag told reporters. "I also recognize that despite that, the CBO numbers are going...
...economy recovers, and sustained deficits revert to dangers that can damage economic growth. "In terms of getting our act together, we are certainly going to be facing the longer term in a bad position," said Alan Auerbach, an economist at U.C. Berkeley, about the latest round of CBO estimates...