Issue Briefs

The House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee approved similar plans last week to transfer $10 billion to the Highway Trust Fund so it can continue making payments to states through next May. Unfortunately, both plans rely on…

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) today released new long-term projections that underscore the need for Washington to move beyond excessive partisanship and budget gimmickry to pursue the broad fiscal reforms necessary to meet the nation’s fiscal and demographic challenges.“There are…

President Obama and Congress may have put fiscal sustainability on the back burner, but the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has not. In its annual update of the federal government’s long-term fiscal outlook, released last week, GAO warns: (more…)

The gyms are packed this month as people try to follow through on their New Year’s resolutions to get into better shape. Sara Imhof, Midwest regional director for The Concord Coalition, wrote in an op-ed Sunday that the nation’s fiscal…

In a change of pace from its usual practice, Congress is allowing a group of temporary tax provisions known as “extenders” to expire at the end of the year.The extenders, like other tax expenditures, are federal subsidies that encourage certain…

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says the military is “challenging every past assumption, every past formula” in trying to reorganize itself for 21st century challenges in the face of a rapidly tightening budget.Uncertainties about sequestration and the Fiscal 2014 budget in…

In their latest updates on Social Security and Medicare, the trustees for the programs include data that show the growing strain they will put on the rest of the federal budget unless Washington can agree on a long-term fiscal sustainability…

One of the central problems with the country’s health care system is that it often shields consumers from costs in ways that provide little incentive to hold them down. In many cases, the consumers do not even know the full…