Chapter 16 Further Reading

The budget literature is large, technical, and politically charged. The list below privileges sources that show their work — that you can verify, that have been credible across multiple administrations, and that span the ideological spectrum from center-left to center-right. Source quality matters more than source agreement: a reader who reads only sources that confirm their priors will end up with a poorer model of fiscal policy than a reader who reads carefully across viewpoints.

Government Sources (the primary data)

Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook (annual, published in late January). The single most important document in federal fiscal policy. Each year, CBO publishes a ten-year baseline projection of outlays, revenues, deficits, and debt under current law. The accompanying Long-Term Budget Outlook extends the projections to thirty years and beyond. Available at cbo.gov. Even fifteen minutes a year reading the Summary Tables will keep a citizen better informed than ninety percent of newspaper coverage of fiscal policy.

CBO, An Analysis of the President's Budgetary Proposals (annual, following each president's budget submission). The independent congressional analysis of what the administration has proposed. Often diverges from OMB scoring; the differences are educational.

Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables (annual, accompanying the President's Budget). The most comprehensive historical compilation of federal outlays and revenues, by category and by agency, going back to 1789 in some series and 1934 in most. Indispensable for context.

U.S. Treasury, Monthly Treasury Statement and Annual Combined Statement of Receipts, Outlays, and Balances. The actual cash flows in and out of the federal government, published with relatively short lag. Treasury Direct (treasurydirect.gov) is the source for debt-ceiling status and outstanding debt composition.

Joint Committee on Taxation. Tax legislation is scored by JCT, not CBO, for revenue effects. JCT publishes detailed analyses of tax bills, distributional analyses of major proposals, and (every two years) the comprehensive Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures.

Government Accountability Office, Financial Report of the United States Government (annual). The federal government's audited financial statements, including accrual-basis liabilities (which CBO and Treasury reports do not fully capture). The accumulating-liability picture in the GAO report is in some ways more sobering than the cash-basis CBO picture.

Social Security Trustees, Annual Report (annual, typically released in late spring). The actuarial projections for OASI and DI Trust Funds. The intermediate-assumption projections are the standard reference; the high-cost and low-cost assumption variants illustrate the range of outcomes.

Center-Left Analysis

Tax Policy Center (joint effort of Brookings and the Urban Institute). The most comprehensive center-left analytical institution on tax policy. Distributional analyses, score critiques, and policy proposals. Published a comprehensive analysis of TCJA in 2017, of IRA in 2022, and of every major fiscal proposal of the last fifteen years. Available at taxpolicycenter.org.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Focused on low-income and anti-poverty programs; produces detailed analyses of SNAP, Medicaid, and the EITC, and of proposals to modify them. CBPP analyses are unapologetically progressive in their normative orientation but their underlying data work is reliable. Available at cbpp.org.

Brookings Institution, especially the work of William Gale (his book Fiscal Therapy, Oxford 2019, is one of the best modern statements of the centrist-fiscal-discipline position) and the broader Brookings tax-and-budget program. Brookings sits in the center-left of the policy spectrum but maintains analytical credibility across the aisle.

Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth (PublicAffairs, 2020). The clearest popular statement of Modern Monetary Theory. Read with appropriate skepticism — most mainstream economists across the spectrum reject MMT's strong policy claims, and the inflation surge of 2021–22 is widely interpreted as empirical evidence against the strongest MMT positions — but the diagnostic insights about sovereign currency issuance are worth engaging.

Matt Yglesias, Slow Boring newsletter and various book and column work. Center-left fiscal commentary, generally pragmatic and willing to engage with arguments from across the spectrum. One Billion Americans (2020) is broadly in this tradition.

Noah Smith, Noahpinion newsletter. Center-left economic commentary with a focus on growth, productivity, and industrial policy. Useful as a counterweight to both fiscal-doom rhetoric and to MMT enthusiasm.

Center-Right Analysis

American Enterprise Institute, especially the tax-policy work of Aparna Mathur, Alan Viard, and Alex Brill. AEI's economic-policy work has been consistently rigorous; it is willing to tell Republicans inconvenient things (e.g., on the actual revenue effects of TCJA) and to engage seriously with center-left counterarguments.

Cato Institute, especially the work of Romina Boccia, Chris Edwards, and the broader fiscal-policy team. Libertarian in orientation, focused on spending restraint and on limits to federal-government scope. Cato's analyses of mandatory programs (Social Security, Medicare reform options) are detailed and worth engaging even for readers who do not share Cato's policy priors.

Manhattan Institute, especially the work of Brian Riedl (on the long-run fiscal trajectory) and Charles Blahous (on entitlements). Riedl's annual Chartbook on the federal budget is one of the clearest visual presentations of fiscal data available.

Hoover Institution, especially the work of John Cogan, Michael Boskin, and John Taylor. The Hoover fiscal-policy program has been consistently center-right and consistently rigorous.

Bruce Bartlett. A long-time conservative tax-policy economist (a Reagan Treasury alumnus) who has become a vocal critic of supply-side tax-cut arguments since the 2000s. His book The Benefit and the Burden (Simon & Schuster, 2012) is one of the best plain-English introductions to tax policy from a right-of-center but heterodox perspective. Where the Right Went Wrong (Doubleday, 2006) is the broader retrospective on conservative fiscal policy.

Academic Reference Texts

Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija, Taxing Ourselves: A Citizen's Guide to the Debate over Taxes (5th edition, MIT Press, 2017). The single best textbook introduction to federal tax policy. Readable, rigorous, balanced. If you are going to read one book on federal tax policy, this is the one.

Penn Wharton Budget Model. A nonpartisan academic project at the Wharton School producing fiscal projections, distributional analyses, and policy scores. Often used as a check on CBO and JCT estimates. Available at budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu.

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). A nonpartisan advocacy organization focused on long-run fiscal sustainability. Their US Budget Watch and various policy briefs are accessible and well-sourced. CRFB has been consistent across administrations of both parties — equally willing to criticize Democratic and Republican fiscal proposals when the math doesn't work. Available at crfb.org.

Histories of Modern Fiscal Politics

Daniel Drezner, The Ideas Industry (Oxford, 2017). On the broader environment in which fiscal-policy ideas circulate — the changing role of think tanks, the rise of the donor class in policy debate, the tension between intellectual rigor and political utility.

Jonathan Chait, The Big Con (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Center-left history of supply-side tax policy. Polemical in tone but historically detailed.

John W. Sloan, The Reagan Effect: Economics and Presidential Leadership (University Press of Kansas, 1999). Historian's account of Reagan-era fiscal policy.

Robert Kuttner, Debtors' Prison (Knopf, 2013). Center-left critique of austerity politics. Useful as a counterweight to fiscal-doom framing.

Niall Ferguson, The Cash Nexus (Basic Books, 2001). Long historical perspective on the relationship between sovereign finance, war, and political institutions. Center-right in orientation; rigorous historically.

Current-Affairs Reading

The Wall Street Journal editorial page (right-of-center) and The New York Times editorial page (left-of-center) on tax-and-budget questions. Read both; they will frame the same numbers very differently.

Bloomberg Government and Politico Pro for granular legislative coverage of appropriations and reconciliation. Subscription resources but well worth it for serious students of federal fiscal politics.

The Hill, Roll Call, and CQ Weekly for daily legislative-process coverage.

How to Read This Literature

The pattern that emerges from reading widely across these sources is that, on the empirical questions — what the actual outlays and revenues are, what the long-run trajectory looks like under current law, how reconciliation actually works — there is broader agreement than partisan media coverage suggests. The disagreement is on the normative questions: what the federal government should do, how progressive the tax code should be, how the burden of long-run adjustment should be distributed across generations and across income groups. Those are real disagreements. They are not resolvable by data alone. They are also not the kind of disagreement that benefits from one-sided reading.

A reader who reads only AEI and Cato will end up with one model of the federal budget. A reader who reads only CBPP and TPC will end up with a different model. A reader who reads both, alongside CBO and JCT directly, will end up with a richer model that incorporates the legitimate concerns of both sides. That is the model this chapter has tried to convey, and that further reading should deepen.