If CBO had been able to employ what has been learned about recent developments and the long-term outlook in the past year--that is, if it had used its current economic and technical assumptions when it put together its budget projections last January--a still formidable surplus would have emerged. 1 Instead of projecting a $ trillion current-policy surplus, it would have estimated $ trillion.
Of course, legislated tax and spending actions over the past year, as estimated by CBO, have reduced the ten-year surplus by $ trillion. This leaves a current-policy ten-year surplus expectation of $ trillion through fiscal 2011.