I am delighted to announce that, for the second year in a row, CBO has been recognized by the Partnership for Public Service as one of the "Best Places to Work in the Federal Government."  We were ranked third among 34 agencies in the small agency category. The Partnership says that its goal is "to ensure [...]

Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the economic stimulus package, certain recipients of funds appropriated in ARRA (most grant and loan recipients, contractors, and subcontractors) are required to report the number of jobs funded through ARRA after the end of each calendar quarter. The law also requires CBO [...]

In March, CBO estimated that the total cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) would be $109 billion over the life of the program.  That estimate (which represented the present value, adjusted for market risk, of the program’s activities) was based on market values in February, actions that had occurred up to that time, [...]

CBO estimates, in its annual summer update of the budget and economic outlook, that the federal budget deficit for 2010 will exceed $1.3 trillion—$71 billion below last year’s total and $27 billion lower than the amount that CBO projected in March 2010 when it issued its previous estimate. Relative to the size of the economy, [...]

The federal budget deficit was about $1.2 trillion in the first ten months of fiscal year 2010, CBO estimates in its latest Monthly Budget Review—about $90 billion less than the roughly $1.3 trillion deficit incurred through July 2009. By CBO’s estimate, spending during the first 10 months of the fiscal year was about $81 billion (or [...]

In responding to questions raised by Congressional staff and outside analysts, we have found some errors in one section of our report The Long-Term Budget Outlook, which was released on June 30, 2010 and discussed in a previous blog entry. To correct those errors, we issued a revised version of the report today along with [...]

In fiscal crises in a number of countries around the world, investors have lost confidence in governments’ abilities to manage their budgets, and those governments have lost their ability to borrow at affordable rates. With U.S. government debt already at a level that is high by historical standards, and the prospect that, under current policies, [...]

People born in other countries are a growing presence in the U.S. labor force. In 2009, more than 1 in 7 people in the U.S. labor force were born elsewhere; 15 years earlier, only 1 in 10 was foreign born. About 40 percent of the foreign-born labor force in 2009 was from Mexico and Central [...]

This morning CBO released a brief about the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) program. The DI program pays cash benefits to nonelderly adults (those younger than age 66) who are judged to be unable to perform “substantial” work because of a disability but who have worked in the past; the program also pays benefits to [...]

This morning CBO released a letter to Chairman Fortney Pete Stark analyzing a proposal to add a “public plan” to the options available through the health insurance exchanges that will be established under the recently enacted health care legislation—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA (Public Law 111-148).   Under the proposal, the Department of [...]