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 macroeconomic variables, such as the Gross Domestic Product. The problem is in knowing how much. Different economic models yield very different answers and
Treasury closed the financial books on fiscal 2014 last week. As my colleague Howard Gleckman noted , the top line figures all came in close to their 40-year averages. The $483 billion deficit was about 2.8 percent of gross domestic product, for example, slightly below the 3.2 percent average of
Suppose your aunt decides to start a business making pizza ovens. She will design and build the ovens, and her daughter will manage operations. A bank is ready to lend her $100,000 to get started, but it wants someone to co-sign and be on the hook if she misses any payments. She offers to pay you $
It isn’t news that congressional Democrats and Republicans have agreed to spend the time between now and the November elections messaging, rather than legislating. When it comes to domestic policy it has only two real issues on its must-do list: Deciding the fate of 50+ tax breaks that expired last
At 8:30 this morning, Uncle Sam suddenly shrunk. Federal spending fell from 21.5 percent of gross domestic product to 20.8 percent, while taxes declined from...
Do you think Congress really cares about the budget deficit anymore? Or that the age-old practice of buying lawmakers votes with local projects is really...
The Congressional Budget Office report on the distribution of tax expenditures is getting lots of buzz, nearly all of it positive. This is a gratifying...
