Blog CBO Director’s Statement About the Budget and Economic Outlook for 2017 to 2027

"CBO Director’s Statement About the Budget and Economic Outlook for 2017 to 2027

Posted by Keith Hall on

January 24, 2017

This morning I briefed the press about The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2017 to 2027, which CBO published today along with two slide decks, The Budget Outlook for 2017 to 2027 in 20 Slides and The Economic Outlook for 2017 to 2027 in 16 Slides, illustrating the report’s key findings.

The briefing opened with the following remarks.

Summary of the Baseline Economic Outlook

The economic forecast that underlies CBO’s budget projections indicates that in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, gross domestic product will expand at an average annual pace of 2.1 percent over the next two years—if current laws generally remained unchanged—after rising last year at an annual rate of 1.8 percent. We expect that growth to boost employment, virtually eliminate the remaining slack in the economy, and drop the unemployment rate to 4.4 percent by the fourth quarter of 2018..."

Economic outlook