Can Congress Balance the Budget Using CBO Estimates?

Enacting tax increases or budget cuts to reduce the projected deficit for 2003 from CBO's estimate of approximately $87 billion given the stimulus bill to zero would be a monumental task. • The very large and controversial deficit reduction packages enacted in 1990 and 1993 each reduced projected deficits by around $40 billion in their first year, and each included immediate tax increases. (These bills each reduced projected deficits by approximately $500 billion over a five-year period.) Deficit reduction of more than twice this amount in 2003 is far beyond anything either the Administration or Congress will contemplate.

• As an example, if Congress starts with CBO's $87 billion deficit estimate (shown in Table 2) and attempts to balance the budget by an across-the-board cut in annual appropriations for programs other than defense and homeland security, funding for those "discretionary" programs would have to be cut approximately 47 percent below the President's request, which ... more.

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