Key Findings

• If the tax cuts are extended and other likely costs occur, deficits will total $4.6 trillion over the next ten years, will never fall below $300 billion in any year, and will exceed $600 billion by 2014.
• Since January 2001, the budget outlook for the ten years 2002 to 2011 has deteriorated by $8.8 trillion, with projections of surpluses being replaced by projections of large, sustained deficits.
• In terms of legislation since 2001, tax cuts are the single largest factor behind the move from surpluses to deficits.

Key Findings:

• Recent families that have left welfare are less likely to have jobs than prior TANF “leavers".
• Poverty rates among families that leave TANF are very high and remain high over time.
• Families that lose TANF cash assistance because of sanctions or time limits are more likely to experience hardship than families that leave for other reasons (such as getting a job).
• Many families receiving TANF include members who are disabled or have other serious health problems that have a negative impact on their employment and earnings.
• Half of the very poor families with children who are eligible for TANF assistance do not receive it. The share of very poor families who do not receive TANF is increasing.
• The expansion of child care assistance programs in the last half of the 1990s increased employment and full-time work among former TANF recipients.
• Provisions in the 1996 welfare law that made many legal immigrants ineligible for various public benefits have led to increased hardship among immigrant families.

Key Findings:

In 2004, as a share of the economy:

• Federal revenues will fall to their lowest level since 1950, during the Truman Administration.
• Federal spending will be lower than in every year from 1975 through 1996 (and thus will be lower than throughout the administrations of Presidents Carter and Reagan and the first President Bush).

In explaining the shift from a large surplus in 2000 to a large deficit in 2004, the drop in revenues since 2000 accounts for more than three times as much of the fiscal deterioration as the increase in expenditures.