Congressional Budget Office “Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2014 to 2023”

The Congressional Budget Office, commonly known as the CBO, produces various documents and reports during any given year.  The CBO, founded in 1974, produces independent analyses for the Congress of economic and budgetary issues.  Reports produced by CBO are available to the Congress and to the public on the website www.cbo.gov.  This nonpartisan agency’s employees are appointed on the basis of their competence.

Types of reports issued are: analysis of the President’s Budget, long-term budget projections, scorekeeping for enacted legislation, monthly budget review, reports on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, sequestration reports, reports on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and analytic reports.

The “options” report is a 305 page document detailing information about: mandatory spending options, discretionary spending options, revenue options, health options, budgetary implications of eliminating a Cabinet Department, and 3 appendices (deficit reduction options, spending options by budget function and options by major program or category). There are a total of 103 options to decrease or increase federal revenue. Some decrease federal spending or increase federal revenue.

Some of the options have come from proposed legislation, the private sector, Congressional offices, and budget proposals of various administrations. CBO makes no recommendations, nor does CBO claim to present all options. The report is available online as well as in paper at the Reference desk (call number Y19.2: D36/18).

Please visit the main reading room of the State Library (room 341) on Mondays through Fridays between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm to use our reference copy or our public access computers to view all the documents/reports produced by the CBO.    


Bette L. Siegel
Government Document Librarian