During and after the "Great Recession" that began in December 2007, the U.S. federal government enacted several rounds of activist fiscal policy. In this paper, we review the recent evolution of thinking and evidence regarding the effectiveness of activist fiscal policy. Although fiscal...

This paper provides alternative measures of federal budget surpluses over 10-year and long-term horizons. Official baseline budget forecasts are based on a series of statutory requirements that may be at variance with reasonable expectation. More plausible notions of current policy toward...

This paper provides new estimates of the federal budget outlook over 10-year and long-term horizons under three sets of assumptions: the Congressional Budget Office baseline, which assumes no changes in current law; an extended policy scenario, in which it is assumed that future Congresses act...