About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

1 Answers to Questions for the Record following a Hearing Conducted by the Senate Committee on the Budget on CBO's Budget Projections 1 (December 18, 2020)

handle is hein.congrec/astqnsf0001 and id is 1 raw text is: DECEMBER 18, 2020 Answers to Questions for the Record Following a Hearing Conducted by the Senate Committee on the Budget on CB0's Budget Projections On September 23, 2020, the Senate Committee on the Budget convened a hearing at which Phillip L. Swagel, the Congressional Budget Office's Director, testified about the agency's report The 2020 Long-Term Budget Outlook.1 After the hearing, four members of the Committee submitted questions for the record. This document provides CBO's answers. It is available at cbo.gov/publication/56908. Senator Grassley Question. In mid-July, Social Security's chief actuary was discussing the Average Wage Index used to help compute Social Security benefits, which may decline this year. The chief actuary said that experience up to that point for 2020 suggested that total wages for the entire year will be on the order of 10 percent lower than what was projected in the 2020 Social Security trustees report. And, the number of workers without any earnings received in 2020, regardless of how much they worked in 2020, will be about 1 percent lower than projected in the trustees report. Data used to compute the Average Wage Index come from tax information collected by the Social Security Administration (SSA), and most of that data, as I understand it, won't be known until late next year. Director Swagel, I have a few questions about the Average Wage Index, or AWI. Does the CBO have access to data used by SSA to compute the AWI? Answer. The Congressional Budget Office receives access to data SSA uses to compute the average wage approximately a year after SSA has published the AWI; even then, CBO only gains access to data for a subset of the population (whereas the AWI computation is based on data for the full population). Therefore, CBO's assessments about the 2020 AWI are made from other, similar data sources, such as employer and household surveys, aggregate wages as reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and data on tax withholding. Question. If so, do you agree with the chief actuary's assessment that as of mid-July, it looked like the AWI will be 10 percent lower than was projected in the 2020 Social Security trustees report, and the number of workers 1 percent lower than projected? Answer. CBO's current projections of the AWI are based on economic projections released in July. In those projections, the number of people working during at least part of 2020 was 1. See Congressional Budget Office, The 2020 Long-Term Budget Outlook (September 2020), www.cbo.gov/publication/56516.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most