The CBO January Baseline: A Deceptively Benign Outlook

The outlook for the federal budget is deceptively benign under the January 2006 baseline assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office ...

Seven Signs of Fiscal Sense: Analysis of Congressional Actions by The Concord Coalition

Seven Signs of Fiscal Sense: Criteria for Evaluating Budget Plans

CBO August Update: A little good news and a lot of red ink

Raising the Social Security Taxable Earnings Cap: Real Reform or Another Placebo?

   One of the most popular ideas for helping to solve Social Security's long-term financing problem is to make ...

Personal Retirement Accounts: Should They be Voluntary or Mandatory?

   Participation in Social Security is mandatory.  If a worker is employed in a job that is "covered" by the ...

Automatic Cost Growth Drives the Problem

   The challenge ahead for Social Security is primarily a matter of rising costs.  With an outlay total of more ...

There is No Free Lunch

Nothing sounds better to a politician than the prospect of fixing a problem without anyone having to give ...

A Real Fix for Social Security Requires An Increase in National Saving

As the population ages in the coming decades, growing expenditures for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other public ...

Social Security's Financial Problems: How Should We View Them?

One of the most confusing things about the current Social Security debate is the many and sometimes divergent ...

A "One Percent" Tax Increase Will Not Fix Social Security's Problems

   The Social Security payroll tax, better known to workers as FICA (or SECA for the self employed), is ...

Social Security's Trust Funds Mask the Problem

Some commentators have suggested that the financial problems confronting Social Security are overblown because the large balance building ...