As this fiscal year began, Congress faced budget projections that showed rapidly rising deficits and debt over the next 10 years. Lawmakers reacted by cutting...

The Congressional Budget Office is under unprecedented political attack. These criticisms are overblown, and likely will prove to be counterproductive—even to those making them. CBO’s...

The country is now living under a stopgap spending measure called a continuing resolution. Roughly speaking, it continues the 2016 level and pattern of appropriated...

The stock market has been ebullient since President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. Many financial experts are expecting quick congressional approval of a major stimulus program consisting...

This is one of a series of guest TaxVox blog posts discussing dynamic scoring . It is obvious that changes in spending and tax policies affect...

Thanks to artificially low interest rates, the United States has been able to finance deficits exceeding $1 trillion every year from 2009 through 2012 at...

In one of the more dangerous fiscal developments of recent months, some on the left are defining successful deficit reduction as merely stabilizing the federal...

Yesterday, I described President Eisenhower’s remarkable success in turning a large deficit in fiscal 1959 into a balanced budget in 1960. It was one of...

The election results did not change the political status quo, and the status quo has not been conducive to solving the nation’s festering fiscal problems...

A constitutional amendment that would require a balanced federal budget has again gained favor, especially among Republicans. The proponents should be forced to answer an...

My blog on “How the Budget Baseline Favors Spending” stimulated numerous thoughtful comments. Some implied that my proposal would reward those who wish to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and ignore the fact that dubious accounting was used to get them passed in the first place. Those arguing this point did not pay sufficient attention to my last paragraph which implied that baseline reform would have to await the disposition of the Bush cuts. Further, I alluded to the possibility that whatever portions of the Bush policy are extended, the extension will again be temporary, thus making it difficult to finally settle the point.

The Congressional Budget Office’s expenditure and revenue baseline is supposed to illustrate the budget implications of extending current policy. Few may care how the baseline is actually constructed, but since all policy changes are measured “from the baseline,” the arcane definitions that describe current policy can have a profound effect on Congressional decisions.