The 12 Takeaways from CBO’s 2012 Budget and Economic Outlook

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its 10-year budget and economic prospectus, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022.” This is CBO’s annual report to Congress on the state of the U.S. economy and the federal budget, and it forms the starting point for the year’s budget discussions.

The CBO projections are important both practically and politically – they form the baseline against which budgets will be judged, and set the scene for policymaking discussions. These 12 takeaways from the Outlook demonstrate that the U.S. faces persistent short- and long-term economic problems and that serious reform still is needed in order to strengthen the recovery and stabilize our debt.

The paper begins by examining the current economic conditions and then turns to the long-term debt trajectory.