My colleague at the Center, Richard Kogan, authored a wonderful summary of our new report tackling the question, "Are the Size and Reach of the Federal Government Exploding." See his post below from the Center's blog, Off the Charts.

Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) pounced on CNN's Soledad O'Brien this week when she raised findings from an analysis that CBPP issued last fall of the tax plan that the senator proposed to the congressional "super committee."  Senator Toomey asserted that a finding that O'Brien cited -- that his...

Mitt Romney said last week that if the safety net "needs a repair, I'll fix it."  It does need some repair, as our recent blog series explained.  That is, the safety net works but still has some serious gaps.

The positive news is that the safety net, bolstered...

As you may have heard, Mitt Romney said Wednesdaymorning, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it." We're glad the governor is expressing support for a safety net and for fixing it if it needs repair. ...

With some policymakers pushing to forestall the defense cuts that are slated to make up half of the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts scheduled to start in January 2013, it's important to remember why Congress and President Obama agreed in the Budget Control Act to split those automatic...

Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, now vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup, hit the nail on the head when he told Atlantic Media's Ron Brownstein recently, "There is virtually nothing the super committee could plausibly do that could offset the harm from making the...

Families must balance their budget every year, proponents of a constitutional balanced budget amendment often argue, so why shouldn't the federal government?  This argument has several serious flaws, the most basic being that families often do not balance their budgets, for good reason.

A family that takes out a student...

The most terrifying result of the debt ceiling crisis is not the deal itself -- with its tight discretionary caps, its special joint committee that Republicans already are saying they won't allow to raise any revenues, and its potential for arbitrary across-the-board cuts. Instead, it's the precedent that Republican congressional...

While the Senate Finance Committee's effort to craft a bipartisan health reform bill has gotten considerable media attention, a troublesome piece of the bill that the Finance Committee's bipartisan negotiators are developing has gone almost unnoticed. The provision -- the so-called "free-rider" requirement -- would effectively discourage employers from...

Sixteen months into the recession, the pace of job losses is worse than in the deep 1981-82 recession, a growing number of families are making excruciating choices with their shrinking pocketbooks, and the federal government is facing stunning budget deficits as far as the eye can see.

So, is...

Some of my fellow progressives have expressed disappointment with the economic recovery package that President Obama just signed into law. Forgive me, but I don't share it. I view the package as an outstanding piece of legislation - all the more remarkable when you consider that it came less than...

The first rule of holes is this: If you're in one, stop digging. New government estimates released last week show that the federal government will be in a big hole in fiscal 2009: a $546 billion deficit. They also help show how we got into this hole -- and

Does Jason Furman, the Obama campaign's new economic policy coordinator, really favor privatizing Social Security and cutting corporate taxes?

Nonsense.

But these are just some of the inaccurate impressions left by last week's news and blog coverage of Furman's appointment.

The accounts portrayed Furman as a pro-Wall Street economist who...

It's time for a reality check in the debate over putting the government's long-term finances back in order.

Last week the trustees who oversee Social Security issued their annual report, showing that the program faces a funding shortfall over the next 75 years totaling 0.56 percent of Gross Domestic...

With Congress drafting its 2009 budget blueprint and President Bush already promising to veto appropriations bills that exceed his tight funding levels for domestic programs, you might think that domestic discretionary programs -- what Congress funds through the annual appropriations process, such as education, biomedical research, and transportation -- have...