Budget Office

WASHINGTON -- The financial turmoil that began with the seemingly narrow meltdown in subprime mortgages is now forcing both policymakers and Wall Street analysts to scale back their expectations for growth in the overall economy. Most economists still predict continued economic growth for the rest of the year and into 2008, but many are trimming their forecasts and warning that even their somewhat darker views could be too rosy. Global Insight Inc., a forecasting firm in Lexington, Mass.

Russia apparently cannot afford to launch several new satellites for monitoring U.S. nuclear missile strikes, so the Congressional Budget Office has explored a truly strange gesture of post-Cold War goodwill:Have the United States pay to put six of the satellites in orbit -- "enough to give Russia 24-hour coverage of U.S. missile fields," according to a CBO letter obtained by The Sun.The Aug. 24 letter to Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota...

WASHINGTON -- The Congressional Budget Office said yesterday that President Clinton had grossly underestimated the cost of his proposal for Medicare coverage of prescription drugs.Dan L. Crippen, director of the budget office, also told Congress that Clinton had overstated the savings that could be achieved by his proposals to redesign Medicare and encourage competition in the traditional fee-for-service program.When Clinton unveiled his drug proposal June 29, he said it would cost $118 billion over 10 years.

GOP's budget games and tax cuts imperil nation's fiscal futureThe recently passed $792 billion tax cut bill is more than just an irresponsible act that, if signed by President Clinton, would undoubtedly return us to the days of soaring deficits and high interest rates.The tax bill is like a runaway train with the accelerator pushed all the way down. By failing to make responsible adjustments in discretionary spending caps, it is leading toward an economic train wreck.In 1997, as part of the balanced budget bill, Congress voted that discretionary spending caps would be used to ensure responsible spending.

WASHINGTON -- Congress is beginning to get a close look at the price of keeping the federal budget in balance -- it would mean squeezing everybody's favorite programs -- and signs are that the lawmakers won't pay it.As for the much-heralded budget surplus: Forget about it.Would-be budget-cutters are unnerved by dire scenarios: Scientific research canceled. Homeless AIDS patients left on the streets. Poor children turned away from Head Start programs. Emergency heating aid to the elderly denied.

The gap between rich and poor has grown into an economic chasm so wide that this year the richest 2.7 million Americans, the top 1 percent, will have as many after-tax dollars to spend as the bottom 100 million.That ratio has more than doubled since 1977, when the top 1 percent had as much as the bottom 49 million, according to new data from the Congressional Budget Office.In dollars, the richest 2.7 million people and the 100 million at the other end of the scale will have about $620 billion to spend, according to an analysis of the budget office figures.

WASHINGTON -- It wasn't long ago that Republicans were everywhere, promising tax cuts. It was as if the party, after a long slumber, had decided to mount a Reaganite revival.Then suddenly, the talk turned gauzy and theoretical. Gone were vows to slash rates right away, and abstract lectures replaced fire-breathing attacks on the status quo.Republicans changed their tone because they discovered that they got outsmarted during last year's budget negotiations.They agreed to a law that all but forbids a tax cut before the year 2006.

WASHINGTON -- While booming stock prices contributed importantly to the government's now-certain budget surplus for 1998 -- the first in almost 30 years -- the market's recent swoon poses little threat so far to the nation's hard-won return to fiscal integrity.Indeed, economists and budget specialists say, the many investors who frantically or more deliberately decided to cash in some stock winnings will swell the surplus even further, at least for a while."As people are pulling out, they're having to take capital gains that have been built up," said James Glassman, managing director of Chase Securities in New York.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon needs "dramatic" spending changes to afford its plan to build a new generation of fighter jets, a new congressional study concludes.And, even with the ambitious modernization plan, the study says, the nation's warplane fleet will reach an unprecedentedly high average age.The total cost of three new aircraft programs could be $50 billion higher than currently estimated, making an already tough funding issue even tougher, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released yesterday.

Two weeks into summer recess, the City Council is returning for a special session tomorrow night to amend a bill on retirement benefits that the mayor vetoed.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke rejected the bill because of a council amendment that would have increased the city's use of the pension fund surplus from $10 million to $12 million. The bill reduces the pension co-payment for workers and increases benefits for older retirees.The council had wanted to use the $2 million to offset cuts in services in the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. But Schmoke said the council, which is limited to cutting the budget, had overstepped its authority.

Republicans are finding a lot not to love in the House Democrats' plans for an $825 billion economic stimulus bill -- a package that they claim will actually total more than $1 trillion after adding 10 years' worth of interest required to help pay for it. Among the items that House Republican leaders have called attention to in recent days, using information provided by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office: 2.7 -- Only 2.7 percent, or $22.3 billion...

Washington - Barack Obama won the presidency just last month, and some supporters think he's already forgotten why. In the view of his critics on the left, Obama - once rated the most liberal member of the Senate - is reinventing himself as a pragmatic moderate as he prepares to take office and making foolish decisions in an effort to broaden his appeal. These critics reacted sharply when he selected a gay-marriage opponent, the Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, to give the invocation at the inauguration.

A Baltimore funeral home chain likely will be able to expand to Baltimore County under legislation that unanimously won approval from County Council members last night. The zoning measure allows funeral homes to be built on cemeteries in certain rural areas with special permission. It allows March Funeral Homes to seek permission to build a funeral home on its 150-acre King Memorial Park in Milford Mill. "It seems rather sensible," said Councilman T. Bryan McIntire, a north county Republican who co-sponsored the legislation with Councilman Kenneth N. Oliver, a Randallstown Democrat.

David Russell John, who worked for more than 30 years in the budget office of the University of Maryland, College Park, retiring as the university's budget director, died of lung cancer March 22. The longtime Laurel resident was 68. Born in Pittsburgh, Mr. John came to the region in his early teens and graduated in 1957 from Laurel High School, where he played basketball and football. He graduated from George Washington University in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in business. Mr. John served in the Army between 1963 and 1965 at Fort Jackson, S.C. He married the former Elizabeth Fetty in 1961.

WASHINGTON -- The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion in the next decade, according to a nonpartisan budget analysis issued yesterday that House Democrats characterized as "mind-boggling." The White House was quick to dismiss the figures from the Congressional Budget Office. "We are on an unsustainable fiscal path and something has to give," CBO Director Peter Orszag said in presenting the estimates to the House Budget Committee at the request of its chairman, Rep. John M. Spratt Jr., a South Carolina Democrat.

WASHINGTON -- The financial turmoil that began with the seemingly narrow meltdown in subprime mortgages is now forcing both policymakers and Wall Street analysts to scale back their expectations for growth in the overall economy. Most economists still predict continued economic growth for the rest of the year and into 2008, but many are trimming their forecasts and warning that even their somewhat darker views could be too rosy. Global Insight Inc., a forecasting firm in Lexington, Mass.

At dueling news conferences in Annapolis yesterday, local officials proudly unveiled a proposed Anne Arundel County budget that they balanced without tax increases - but school leaders angrily decried their portion as "not meeting the needs of children." In Towson, school officials were up in arms over tens of millions of dollars cut by the Baltimore County executive from a $118 million increase they had hoped to use for textbooks, more kindergarten aides, and an infusion of funds to help low-income middle school students in the 2008 fiscal budget.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush can balance the budget within five years, or he can get Congress to extend his tax cuts beyond their scheduled expiration, the Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday - but probably not both. Bush has said otherwise, committing himself in Tuesday's State of the Union address, as he did earlier this month, to providing Congress on Feb. 5 with spending and tax proposals for fiscal year 2008 that would put the budget on a path toward balance by 2012. "We must balance the federal budget," Bush said Tuesday night.

WASHINGTON -- The Congressional Budget Office revised its estimates of the federal deficit yesterday, predicting that it would shrink to $260 billion in the current fiscal year - lower than previously projected - but rise to $286 billion in fiscal 2007, which begins Oct. 1. The new figures are stoking a partisan debate over fiscal responsibility as the midterm elections approach. Republicans cheered the prospect of a third straight year of decline in the deficit as evidence that the economy is benefiting from GOP-sponsored tax cuts.

WASHINGTON -- More than 50 million Medicaid recipients will soon have to produce birth certificates, passports or other documents to prove that they are U.S. citizens, and everyone who applies for coverage after June 30 will have to show similar documents under a new federal law. The requirement is meant to stop the "theft of Medicaid benefits by illegal aliens," in the words of Rep. Charlie Norwood, a Georgia Republican and a principal author of the...