I'm not sure what the news is here.

The CBO projects no net deficit, but this is because they:

1) Have forgotten to add in the costs of war
2) Have forgotten that the AMT needs revision
3) Are assuming that the real discretionary budget will fall by 20% (maybe we'll send federal prisoners on furlough)
4) Haven't noticed that Social Security money needs to be set aside to meet the needs of the program
5) Aren't paying attention to the fact that the Bush tax cut suddenly sunsets, causing massive dislocation if some transition is not built in
6) Are engaged in rosy scenario economic planning ala David Stockman
7) Are shifting to dynamic scoring to maintain the illusion as long as possible

Resulting in...

About $4.3 Trillion dollars that will suddenly need to be found when everyone wakes up from this dream.

The only news is that the media have not blown the whistle on the looting of the Treasury... and the gross politicization of CBO.

Oh, come on Brad, surely you're kidding about the night-time reading bit. Unless you WANT to send yourself to sleep. This one has to be early morning, after a strong cup of coffee. After all the future US budget outlook isn't for the faint hearted. Not to mention the nightmares, and cold sweats around 3am.

Good bedtime books I'm tucking in to at the moment are Raymond de Roovers 'Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank' (this one perhaps just before you go to sleep....zzzzzz) and (five stars) William Calvin's 'A Brain for All Seasons'.

Calvin has the same sort of problem with climatic change (NB he's worried it's suddenly going to get very cold) that I have with demography. It's one thing figuring out that something big is going to happen, and something else altogether figuring out what to do about it.

But Charles, I thought at least some of the things you complain about re CBO are forced on them--making projections according to "current law".

Best,

Mr Fromm says >at least some of the things you complain about re CBO are forced on them--making projections according to "current law".
<<

I really don't know what you are saying, Mr. Fromm, but I'll try to mindread.

Dynamic scoring is not imposed by law, as far as I know. It is imposed by politicians.

But even so, real professionals refuse to be forced into making phony projections, to the point of making superiors fire them. The CBO began to become politicized in 1995. Alice Rivlin was absolutely tremendous in her position there, making projections that were right on the money despite being mocked by the Republicans. When she moved on to the White House, she continued to make accurate projections even as the CBO, under Republican control, started to make outrageously wrong projections.

But now, the CBO not just fudging, stretching and twisting the data. It is outright lying.

If I haven't answered your implied question, please let me know and I'll try again.

Charles---there's no need to mindread.

As BDL himself says, "Use Google!"
I did a search on
CBO current law budget projections

One of the things I came up with was:

From a page at the Concord Coalition:: So what's so optimistic about the projection? To begin with, there is the assumption that legislated caps on future discretionary spending will be carried out to the letter. CBO is obliged to make this assumption because the baseline must reflect current law, and the caps are law. [Emphasis added.]

Of course, dynamic scoring is another thing entirely...but that's not in place yet, is it?

Best,

Mr. Fromm, the budgetary caps are law. That is exactly one point (#3) of the seven I raised.

Any professional CBO head would produce the estimates as stated and then add in the cover letter or in an appendix a statement to the effect that the official estimates are gross understatements. The failure to do so when the known errors are almost as large as the budget is notable.

What I said about politicization of the CBO is correct. And that's something you won't learn about by playing with search engines. You learn about it by wathcing over the years to see whose budget projections are accurate. While Rivlin was at CBO, Rivlin. While Rivlin was at the White House, the White House. Now that Rivlin's gone, the projections are total Bushwah.

Knowing Brad's fondness of physics, I think he would get a kick out of this quote (which is somewhat relevant to the subject here):

There are 10¹¹ stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

--Richard Feynman

I am trying to connect the Gale/Orzag analysis with reality. Retirements have been switched from defined output to defined input and many people have lost 1/3 or more as stock prices have collapsed. Health care costs are skyrocketing. This analysis suggests that the US Treasury has spent all of the SS moneys that have been collected since the 1980s on other things. Reagan gave tax cuts to the rich, that did not trickle down and the rest of us have been paying increased payroll taxes since 1982 and now we find out that the money we have been paying in has evaporated? We have an apparent failure of fiscal policy to prepare us for the lean years that start one decade away. I see my future clearly now. "Welcome to Walmart."