Observers often cite fraud as an important contributor to high health care spending, particularly in federal programs. This report describes how CBO estimates the budgetary effects of legislative proposals to reduce fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program...

CBO projects that, under current law, the federal budget deficit will fall to $468 billion in 2015 – 2.6 percent of GDP – and remain roughly stable, as a percentage of GDP, through 2018. After that, the gap between spending and revenues is projected to grow, raising the already high level of...

This report presents additional information about CBO’s long-term projections of revenues and outlays for Social Security and provides information on Social Security benefits and payroll taxes for people born in different years and at different earnings levels. CBO has made a number of changes...

CBO projects that the Department of Defense’s plans would cost an average of $47 billion per year more from 2015 through 2021 than would be provided under the limits established by the Budget Control Act. CBO’s estimate of costs for that period is $17 billion per year higher than DoD’s...

The Department of Defense's (DoD's) base budget increased by 31 percent (adjusted for inflation) between 2000 and 2014, mainly because of higher costs for military personnel and operation and maintenance. Adjusted to exclude inflation, funding for military personnel grew by 46 percent despite a...

The President's proposals would, relative to CBO's current-law baseline, boost deficits from 2014 through 2016 but reduce them from 2017 through 2024, CBO and JCT estimate. Deficits would total $6.6 trillion between 2015 and 2024, $1.0 trillion less than the cumulative deficit in CBO's baseline....

Although federal deficits have shrunk markedly in recent years, growing spending for Social Security and major health care programs, along with increasing interest costs, would cause them to rise steadily over the long term. The larger deficits would cause federal debt to grow faster than the...

Under current law, the deficit will decrease to $492 billion in 2014, CBO projects, as revenues continue rebounding from their low in the recession. But beginning in 2016, deficits will rise again—largely because of an aging population, rising health care costs, an expansion of federal...

Under budgetary paths, but not particular policies, specified in the 2016 budget resolution conference report, total debt would be smaller than in CBO’s baseline. Economic output would be lower in the next few years but higher thereafter.

CBO has analyzed the effects on the economy stemming from a set of paths for federal revenues and noninterest spending specified by Chairman Mike Enzi of the Senate Budget Committee and how those macroeconomic effects in turn would affect the federal budget.