Publications
Apr 16, 2012
U.S. Budget Watch has published a qualitative Presidential Candidate Plan Comparison Tool for the last four Republican presidential candidates and their various proposals with fiscal impacts, including long-term proposals for revenues, regulations, Social Security, health care, other spending, and budget processes.
Feb 23, 2012
U.S. Budget Watch has just released a new report that analyzes how the policy proposals put forth by Speaker Newt Gingrich, Congressman Ron Paul, Governor Mitt Romney, and Senator Rick Santorum will affect the federal budget. The report, Primary Numbers: The GOP Candidates and the National Debt, attempts to measure the debt impact of each candidate's platforms as they have presented them to date.
Dec 15, 2011
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has officially re-launched U.S. Budget Watch, a project meant to raise awareness of fiscal issues in the 2012 campaign and to provide objective analysis of the candidates' fiscal plans. Our first paper, The 12 Principles of Fiscal Responsibility for the 2012 Campaign, lays our 12 specific principles that all candidates should adhere to.
Nov 23, 2009
With new cost estimates for the revised House health care reform bill, CRFB has updated the health care comparisons chart. Read Evaluating Health Care Plans for a full analysis of the three health care reform bills.
Oct 19, 2009
Building on Comparing Health Care Plans, this paper goes beyond simply describing the Senate HELP bill, the House Tri-Committee bill, and the amended Senate Finance billto offer detailed analysis on their key costs, deficit impacts, and long-term fiscal implications.
Sep 28, 2009
While there is broad agreement that health reform is necessary, there is little consensus on what changes are needed. To help the public understand the health care reform debate, this paper focuses on the ten-year costs and savings under the major provisions of the Senate HELP Committee bill, the Finance Committee bill, and the House Tri-Committee bill.
UPDATE: See the latest cost and savings estimates of the amended Finance bill here.
Sep 03, 2009
The CBO recently projected a ten-year deficit of $7.1 trillion using a "current law" baseline. But these numbers may prove to be optimistic. CRFB argues that four major assumptions in the baseline are unlikely to materialize, leading to a ten-year deficit of $12.6 trillion. This paper discusses US Budget Watch's own "current policy" baseline, which assumes particular policies do not conform to current law.
