To show how the federal budget might be affected if economic conditions differed from those in its current economic forecast, CBO has developed “rules of thumb” that provide a sense of how changes in four key economic variables would affect revenues, outlays, and deficits.
This workbook allows users to enter an alternative scenario for productivity growth, labor force growth, inflation, or interest rates and see estimates of revenues, several types of spending, and deficits under those scenarios.
