Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

The Federal Budget Debate

Romney Budget Proposals Would Require Massive Cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Other Programs

"Governor Mitt Romney’s proposals to cap total federal spending, boost defense spending, cut taxes, and balance the budget would require extraordinarily large cuts in other programs, both entitlements and discretionary programs, according to our revised analysis based on new information and updated projections.

"For the most part, Governor Romney has not outlined cuts in specific programs. But if policymakers exempted Social Security from the cuts, as Romney has suggested, and cut Medicare, Medicaid, and all other entitlement and discretionary programs by the same percentage — to meet Romney’s spending cap, defense spending target, and balanced budget requirement — then non-defense programs other than Social Security would have to be cut 29 percent in 2016 and 59 percent in 2022." Read more

Risk of New Debt Ceiling Crisis

Statement: Greenstein on Speaker Boehner’s Recent Debt Limit Remarks

"No one should underestimate the significance of House Speaker John Boehner’s declaration... that he will block an increase in the debt limit next winter unless policymakers match each dollar of debt limit increase with at least a dollar in budget cuts, with no revenue increases. This standard, which key Republican leaders have said they will insist on for all future debt limit increases, would both produce extreme policies and repeat these lawmakers’ hostage-taking strategy of last summer that threatened the economy and full faith and credit of the U.S. government — and raised the risks of a first-ever, potentially catastrophic, default." Read more

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More: Federal Budget Analyses

Understanding the Safety Net

Are Low-Income Programs Enlarging the Nation’s Long-Term Fiscal Problem?

Low-Income Entitlement Spending Outside Health Set to Fall Back to Prior 40-Year Average Virtually all of the recent growth in spending for means-tested programs is due to two factors: the economic downturn and rising costs throughout the U.S. health care system, which affect costs for private-sector care as much as for Medicaid and other government health care programs.

Moreover, Congressional Budget Office projections show that federal spending on means-tested programs other than health care programs will fall substantially as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) as the economy recovers — and fall below its average level as a percent of GDP over the prior 40 years, from 1972 to 2011. Since these programs are not rising as a percent of GDP, they do not contribute to our long-term fiscal problems. Read more

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