Economic Growth
The report sees unemployment declining to 3.3 percent in 2019 on an annual average, from 3.8 percent this year.
CBO Director Keith Hall will testify about the report this week before the House and Senate budget committees.
Congress isn’t planning to enact any major deficit-cutting legislation before the November midterm elections. While the House will draft a budget resolution, the Senate has indicated it won’t take one up. Without the fast-track budget reconciliation, there is no chance entitlement cuts conservative Republicans are seeking can be enacted because Democrats can employ a Senate filibuster.
The House plans a symbolic vote on a balanced budget amendment in the coming weeks and is also discussing bringing forward a package to cancel some of the domestic spending increases from the omnibus spending bill.
Little Chance
Those increases were put in the bill at the request of Democrats since the legislation required Senate Democratic votes to pass. Analysts see little chance of enactment for the legislation, which would undermined the ability of Republican leaders to negotiate future bipartisan deals, even though it can clear the Senate with just 50 Republican votes.
The CBO baseline represents what it projects will happen if current law is allowed to remain in effect. CBO assumes that budget caps on annual appropriations, which Congress has raised regularly, remain in effect. Because of that, deficits are likely to be even larger than CBO is projecting.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.