The Budget for Fiscal Year 2004

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released the first of its annual budget reports in late January. The baseline estimates from CBO run through FY2013. CBO’s baseline estimates are similar in construction to those produced by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for the President. CBO’s January baseline has a $145 billion deficit in FY2004 (down from $199 billion in FY2003), that becomes a small surplus of $65 billion in FY2008. The report also included an update to CBO’s January baseline that pushed the deficit for FY2004 to $200 billion from $145 billion. The revisions move the return to a surplus from FY2007 to FY2008 and reduce the cumulative FY2004- FY2013 surplus from $1,336 billion (January) to $891 billion (March). CBO’s estimates of the President’s budget, a recasting of the policies using CBO assumptions and budget estimating methods, raise the expected deficit for FY2004 to $338 billion from the OMB estimated $307 billion