Fiscal Facts: The Congressional Budget Office

On June 30, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its new long-term federal budget outlook (the last outlook was released in June 2009), with fiscal and economic projections through 2084. The update includes both a new extended-baseline scenario and a new alternative fiscal scenario. The CBO's extended-baseline scenario projects the federal budget under the assumption that current laws remain unchanged. The alternative fiscal scenario illustrates the fiscal effects of certain policy changes that are widely expected to be enacted, such as extending expiring tax cuts, indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax to inflation, and overriding planned cuts to Medicare reimbursements. What follows is a summary of the major changes in the new 2010 Long-Term

Budget Outlook.