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CongressionalBudgetOffice
CBO Head: Something's Got to Give in Federal Budget
By Tamara Lytle - AOL News(April 8) -- Fresh off its stint in the crossfire of health care reform, the Congressional Budget Office is gearing up to study another potential major change in Americans' lives: the creation of a value-added tax. Speaking at a breakfast with reporters in Washington today, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said his job doesn't involve deciding whether the tax -- or any other budget change -- is a good idea. But he did say members of Congress have begun asking questions about it. The CBO spent much of the past year in the middle of the partisan debate over health care reform, since the agency ...
GOP Calls Health Reform Budget 'House of Cards'
By Patricia Murphy - Politics DailyWhen the Congressional Budget Office released its preliminary cost assessment for the Democrats' health care reform proposal Thursday, the estimate came in at $940 billion in new federal spending over 10 years -- just under the $1 trillion mark that fiscally conservative Democrats had identified as their cut off point for supporting the measure. But by Friday, House Republicans had culled through the numbers and called a press conference to point to what they called Democrats' use of "budget trickery" to drag the bill's price tag to its more politically palatable number. GOP members took ...
Democrats' Momentum Building for Sunday Health Vote
By Patricia Murphy - Politics DailyAfter months of debate, delays and intraparty disarray, Democrats in Washington seemed to gain crucial momentum toward passing a health care reform bill by week's end. But legislative booby traps and fickle election-year politics mean that significant hurdles await the bill in the Senate, even if it passes the House in a likely Sunday vote. The tide seemed to turn for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats on Thursday morning, when the Congressional Budget Office released a very preliminary, but highly favorable, cost estimate for the newly combined House and Senate bills that ...
Health Bill Could Cut Deficits by $118 billion, Say Hill Budget Pros
By Tom Diemer - Politics DailyThe budget experts on Capitol Hill say the Senate-passed health care bill would reduce federal budget deficits by $118 billion over a 10-year period -- not quite as much as they figured in an earlier assessment. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said its estimate today does not differ "substantially" from a slightly higher savings projection in December. It said the estimate folds in amendments adopted before the Dec. 24 passage of the bill and also includes assumptions about when a new law would take effect. The CBO did not consider changes proposed by President Obama that have yet ...
Budget Deficit Down Slightly, Still Hits $1.35 Trillion
By Christopher Weber - Politics DailyThe 2010 U.S. budget gap is a projected $1.35 trillion, down slightly from last year's $1.4 trillion deficit that set a post-World War II record. In its annual report, the Congressional Budget Office called the budget outlook "bleak." CBO chief Douglas Elmendorf said the economic recovery will be slow, predicting public debt will make up a huge share of the overall economy and remain a constant threat to growth for the foreseeable future, The Washington Times reported. "It is true that as we push [publicly held debt] in this country to 60 percent of GDP at the end of this [fiscal] year and ...
Obama's Risky Plan: Government Takeover of the Student Loan Business
By Andrew Clark - Politics DailyAll of the noise-making caused by the health-care-reform effort and the political uncertainty now surrounding Obama's liberal agenda has allowed one item on that agenda to pass swiftly and smoothly under the radar -- his plan to nationalize the entire student loan process. Unfortunately, the plan is too risky for the economy. The White House initially thought the plan would face stiff resistance and launch a contentious and hard-fought ideological battle in Congress. "After all," wrote Time Magazine in September, "the Administration's proposal to restructure the student-loan industry is, in ...
Budget Office Projects Federal Deficit of $1.35 Trillion
By not in system - AOL NewsWASHINGTON (Jan. 26) -- The latest congressional budget estimates out Tuesday predict a $1.35 trillion deficit for this year as the economy continues to slowly recover from the recession. The Congressional Budget Office report predicts a sluggish economic recovery and continued high deficits that present twin political problems for President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies. The report sees a slow rebound of the economy, with unemployment averaging 10.1 percent this year as the economy grows by just over 2 percent. It would grow only slightly more next year with an unemployment rate of ...
Five Million Americans Hang in the Balance Between the House, Senate Health Bills
By Walter Shapiro - Politics DailyAs the congressional health-care marathon enters its final weeks (or final months for those pessimistic about Capitol Hill timetables), the remaining obstacles seem to be limited to the perpetually contentious issues of abortion, the taxation of generous Lexus-level insurance plans, and, yes, the public option. Lost in the shuffle are the estimated 5 million Americans who would gain health-insurance coverage under the House bill, but not under the legislation that survived a Senate filibuster. ...
The Stimulus and Jobs: Can the GOP Read?
By David Corn - Politics DailyDo Republicans read? I ask that seriously. The past few days, with the president focused on his White House jobs summit, GOPers have targeted their anti-Obama crusade on the president's economic record. And their number-one talking point has been this: Obama's stimulus stinks. Some examples: -- In a speech at the Heritage Foundation, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor decried the "failure" of Obama's $787 billion stimulus package. -- Talk show agitator Glenn Beck huffed that "jobs are not being saved or created." -- Sarah Palin tweeted, "Baffling/nonsensical:Obama's talk of yet another ...
Opinion: Health Care Reform's Lowered Expectations
By not in system - AOL NewsPerhaps it's a sign of how far health care reform has drifted off course. Or of how worried Democrats are about getting health care reform passed. How else to explain the Senate leadership's joyful response to a Congressional Budget Office report that finds that their reform plan will do little to lower insurance costs for millions of Americans, will raise premiums for millions more, and will cut costs for others only through heavy government subsidies? That's not exactly what the public was promised when the health care reform train got rolling. Consider: When President Barack Obama was ...
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