Free Republic

The Congressional Budget Office this week backed away from the idea of taxing cars based on how far they drive in order to boost federal highway taxes, after initially saying the idea is one that could be explored. . . . The Obama administration and others have floated the idea of imposing a tax on vehicle miles traveled tax, or a VMT tax, which would charge people based on how far they drive. And in 2011, CBO put out a report that said this was a "practical" option in light of new technology that makes it easier to track cars...

The American debt problem was almost entirely ignored at the Republican National Convention last week, and we can expect nothing more when the Democrats gather this week. Both parties support the entitlement spending system and the decrepit tax system that fails to support it. They compete on the fiscal side of politics with impossible promises to spend more and tax less. Imagine the U.S. Treasury as an airplane beginning to roll down the runway to take off. For a mile or so, the plane gains no altitude, then the wings start to generate lift. The wheels leave the ground and...

Health Reform: ObamaCare has been taking lots of hits lately, but a new report from the Congressional Budget Office is a gut punch. It shows that ObamaCare’s outlook has worsened considerably as fewer people sign up and costs rise more than expected.

In the latest report to undercut President Obama’s “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” promise, the Congressional Budget Office projects millions of workers will leave employer-sponsored health plans over the next decade because of ObamaCare. Some will opt to go on Medicaid, but others will be kicked off their company plans by employers who decide not to offer coverage anymore, according to a new CBO report titled, “Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance Coverage for People Under Age 65: 2016 to 2026.” “As a result of the ACA, between 4 million and 9 million fewer people...

Three years ago, on the eve of Obamacare’s implementation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that President Obama's centerpiece legislation would result in an average of 201 million people having private health insurance in any given month of 2016. Now that 2016 is here, the CBO says that just 177 million people, on average, will have private health insurance in any given month of this year—a shortfall of 24 million people. Indeed, based on the CBO's own numbers, it seems possible that Obamacare has actually reduced the number of people with private health insurance. In 2013, the CBO projected that,...

The slow-motion implosion of Obamacare continues with the newest report from the Congressional Budget Office foreseeing up to 9 million Americans losing their employer-based insurance coverage over the next decade because of spiking premiums. The Washington Times: Obamacare insurance premiums will leap 6 percent a year over the next decade, and companies will drop millions of employees from their health plans as insurers and employers calibrate their offerings for the new marketplace, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday. The health law will continue to steadily grow in both cost and coverage, working toward President Obama’s goal of expanding those with...

The congressional budget office has revised its Obamacare enrollment target for 2016 downward by a million people. This is the second such downgrade the CBO has issued in 2016. The Hill reports: About 12 million people are now expected to have ObamaCare coverage by the end of 2016, according to the nonpartisan budget office. Just three months ago, the office had predicted that 13 million people would have coverage.The latest enrollment estimate is an even steeper drop from the CBO’s estimates from 2015, which predicted 21 million people would have marketplace coverage by this time. The enrollment after the end...

The headline you'll read is that the Rubio plan cuts taxes by $6.8 trillion over a decade. This needs to be put in the context of the $42 trillion of revenue the federal government is projected to collect over the next ten years. So it's a big score, but it's not so big when compared to the larger tax revenue picture. Rarely are these two numbers associated, as they always should be. Needless to say, they are not in the TPC report. TPC themselves admit that they lack the capacity to do a macroeconomic analysis of the plan. In other...

In the midst of the election circus and pageantry, it seems once again fiscal policy issues have taken a backseat. This might not matter if the issue were not of dire importance to Americans and their futures. But on the heels of the new Budget and Economic Outlook released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week, it has become all too clear that the fiscal issues our country faces are very real and must be dealt with. Every year, this non partisan analysis of our projected debt and deficit published doesn't mince words- the deficit only continues to get...

Taxpayers will have to shell out an estimated $18 billion more to subsidize Obamacare in 2016 despite lower than expected enrollment in the health care exchanges, according to a forecast by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In its latest 10-year economic forecast, CBO predicted that 13 million Americans would purchase health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges in 2016, with 11 million of them receiving government subsidies to help pay for their premiums. But that figure is 40 percent lower than the 21 million enrollees CBO predicted last year would sign up. ...

Government estimates of debt over the next decade have gone from adding $1.5 trillion in debt to $9.4 trillion due to recent tax legislation. That will put the country up over $30 trillion in debt assuming there are no further recessions. This is the decade of no return. Seems blowing up peoples countries and importing their poor and putting them on benefits is no longer working. We have also tried closing all our factories and letting the world scam us out of jobs in the “free trade” system. World’s highest tax rates…not seeming to help either. Cramming people into “universities”...

A bill to repeal major components of the Affordable Care Act that would also defund nationwide healthcare provider Planned Parenthood would reduce the federal deficit by $516 billion over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office said in an estimate published Monday. [...] The bill, dubbed the Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, would repeal several requirements vital to Obamacare, including the mandate that requires employers of a minimum size to offer employees health insurance. It would also undo what's known as the individual mandate, which requires all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a hefty fine. Republicans...

Plenty of Americans choose to reject ObamaCare to save themselves a boatload of money. Republicans in Congress believe the US budget should have that choice, and the CBO agrees with them that it would work, too. Their latest analysis of a bill that would repeal the major components of ObamaCare through the reconciliation process concludes that it would reduce federal deficit spending by $516 billion over the first ten years: Legislation to gut most of ObamaCare’s mandates and taxes, known as Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, would reduce the deficit by $516 billion over 10 years, according to the...

Budgets: The next time you hear someone complain about how much a tax cut will "cost" the government, take it with a very large grain of salt. The official scorekeeper of such things is almost always wrong.

After barely more than a year in operation, ObamaCare is now projected to require more than a trillion dollars in deficit spending over the next decade, according to the new CBO report. Buried in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office is the latest admission that ObamaCare was sold on a foundation of lies. Back in 2009, President Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress that “our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers.” “Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing comes close. Nothing else.” The president’s speech was designed to...

The U.S. government ran a budget surplus in June, leaving the budget deficit so far this year running under last year’s level. The Treasury Department says the surplus in June totaled $51.8 billion, compared to a surplus of $70.5 billion a year ago. However, the larger 2014 monthly surplus was heavily influenced by a timing quirk that had moved June benefit payments into May last year because June 1 fell on a Saturday.For the current budget year, the government is running a deficit of $313.4 billion, a 14.3 percent reduction from the imbalance over the first nine months of the...

New figures by the Congressional Budget Office released on Monday reveal that over the next 10 years the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will double to 78%. Over the last four decades America's average debt-to-GDP ratio was 39%. At the end of 2007, federal debt was just 35% of GDP. The CBO report says gross federal debt will soar from $17.7 trillion to $27 trillion over the next ten years. CBO warned of the dire consequences the nation's debt will have if gone unchecked. "Such high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences," says the report. "Federal spending on interest payments...

(CNSNews.com) – Testifying in the U.S Senate yesterday, Congressional Budget Office Director Keith Hall warned that the publicly held debt of the U.S. government, when measured as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, is headed toward a level the United States has seen only once in its history—at the end of World War II.To simply keep the debt at the high historical level where it currently sits—74 percent of GDP–would require either significant increases in federal tax revenue or decreases in non-interest federal spending (or a combination of the two).Historically, U.S. government debt as a percentage of GDP hit its...

Testifying in the U.S Senate yesterday, Congressional Budget Office Director Keith Hall warned that the publicly held debt of the U.S. government, when measured as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, is headed toward a level the United States has seen only once in its history—at the end of World War II. To simply keep the debt at the high historical level where it currently sits—74 percent of GDP--would require either significant increases in federal tax revenue or decreases in non-interest federal spending (or a combination of the two).

(CNSNews.com) - Testifying in the U.S Senate yesterday, Congressional Budget Office Director Keith Hall warned that the publicly held debt of the U.S. government, when measured as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, is headed toward a level the United States has seen only once in its history—at the end of World War II. To simply keep the debt at the high historical level where it currently sits—74 percent of GDP--would require either significant increases in federal tax revenue or decreases in non-interest federal spending (or a combination of the two). Historically, U.S. government debt as a percentage of GDP...