TY  - JOUR
AU  - Auerbach,Alan J.
AU  - Gale,William G.
TI  - Perspectives on the Budget Surplus
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7837
PY  - 2000
Y2  - August 2000
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7837
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7837.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alan J. Auerbach
Department of Economics
530 Evans Hall, #3880
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 510/643-0711
Fax: 510/643-0413
E-Mail: auerbach@econ.berkeley.edu

William Gale
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202/797-6148
Fax: 202/797-6181
E-Mail: wgale@brookings.edu
AB  - 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 discretionary spending, taxes and retirement trust funds imply that surpluses over the next 10 years will be substantially smaller than the baseline forecasts indicate.  Properly accounting for long-term imbalances in social security and the rest of the budget implies that, under plausible definitions of current policy, the federal government faces a long-term shortfall.
ER  -