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

Long-Term Analysis of a Budget Proposal by Chariman Ryan 1 (April 2011)

handle is hein.congrec/cbo8015 and id is 1 raw text is: CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE Long-Term Analysis of a Budget Proposal by Chairman Ryan April 5, 2011 On April 8, 2011, CBO corrected a sentence on page 9, as noted there. Over the next several decades, the continued aging of the population and the growth of health care costs will, under current law, almost certainly boost federal spending significantly relative to the output of the economy. According to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) most recent long-term projections, which were issued in June 2010 and were based on the assumption that then-current law would generally remain in place, spending on Social Security and the government's major mandatory health care programs-Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and health insurance subsidies to be provided through insurance exchanges-will increase from roughly 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) today to about 15 percent 20 years from now.' If revenues and federal spending apart from those programs remain near their past levels relative to GDP, the increase in spending on Social Security and the health care programs will lead to rapidly growing budget deficits and mounting federal debt. At the request of the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan, CBO has analyzed a proposal that would substantially change federal payments under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, eliminate the subsidies to be provided through new insurance exchanges under last year's major health care legislation, leave Social Security as it would be under current law, and set paths for all other federal spending (excluding interest) and federal tax revenues based on specified growth rates or specified percentages of GDP CBO has conducted a long-term analysis of the major provisions of the proposal as described by the Chairman's staff. The specifica- tions may differ in some ways from the plan released today by Chairman Ryan in The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America's Promise. CBO has not reviewed legislative language for the proposal, so this analysis does not represent a cost estimate for legislation that might implement the proposal. Rather, it is an assessment of the broad, long-term budgetary impacts of the proposal, with results spanning several decades and measured as a share of GDP. It is therefore quite 1. See Congressional Budget Office, The Long- Term Budget Outlook (June 2010, revised August 2010). For the purpose of that analysis, CBO assumed that scheduled benefits for Social Security and Part A of Medicare would continue to be paid even if the trust funds for those programs became exhausted. Mandatory spending is generally controlled through authorizing legislation by setting eligibility rules, benefit formulas, and other parameters. Discretionary spending is con- trolled through the annual appropriation process.

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