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More than 2 million service members have deployed in support of overseas contingency operations (OCO) in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001. Some military service members receive medical care in the combat theater for injuries or other medical conditions sustained while deployed. Other service members have combat-related medical conditions that are identified and treated after they return from war within the Department of Defense s (DoD s) health care system for active-duty personnel and within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for veterans, including deactivated reservists. VA provides health care services through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), which treats veterans for service-connected conditions and other conditions. Some observers contend that DoD and VHA may not adequately screen, diagnose, and treat OCO service members and veterans affected by PTSD and mild TBI. In this study, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzes VHA s care of OCO patients diagnosed with PTSD or TBI and compares the reported rates of occurrence of those conditions within VHA with estimates of the prevalence of those conditions in the broader population of service members who have deployed to recent overseas contingency operations. (Prevalence estimates gauge the proportion of cases of a disease or condition in a population, whether or not people have received a diagnosis from a medical professional; by comparison, the reported occurrence of conditions among the people who have been treated within VHA reflects counts of diagnoses by medical professionals.) The study also examines the costs that VHA has incurred in treating patients diagnosed with PTSD and TBI.

This report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) presents an analysis of the proposals contained in the President's budget request for fiscal year 2013. The analysis is based on CBO's economic projections and estimating techniques (rather than the Administration's) and incorporates estimates by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation for the President's tax proposals. In conjunction with analyzing the President's budget, CBO has updated its baseline budget projections, which were previously issued in January 2012. Unlike its estimates of the President's budget, CBO's baseline projections largely reflect the assumption that current tax and spending laws will remain unchanged, so as to provide a benchmark against which potential legislation can be measured. Under that assumption, CBO estimates that the deficit would total $1.2 trillion in 2012 and that cumulative deficits over the 2013-2022 period would amount to $2.9 trillion. The President's budget request specifies spending and revenue policies for the 2013-2022 period and also includes initiatives that would have budgetary effects in fiscal year 2012.

Each year, after the President releases his annual budget request, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzes the proposals and, using its own estimating procedures and assumptions, projects what the federal budget would look like over the next 10 years if those proposals were adopted. CBO usually provides those results in two parts: The first part presents an examination of the proposals budgetary impact without considering their effects on the U.S. economy. The second part, which takes more time to prepare, shows their potential effects on the economy and, in turn, the impact of those macroeconomic effects on the budget. CBO has now completed that second analysis, and this report summarizes the results.

The rate of unemployment in the United States has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, making the past three years the longest stretch of high unemployment in this country since the Great Depression. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the unemployment rate will remain above 8 percent until 2014. The official unemployment rate excludes those individuals who would like to work but have not searched for a job in the past four weeks as well as those who are working part-time but would prefer full-time work; if those people were counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate in January 2012 would have been about 15 percent. Compounding the problem of high unemployment, the share of unemployed people looking for work for more than six months referred to as the long-term unemployed topped 40 percent in December 2009 for the first time since 1948, when such data began to be collected; it has remained above that level ever since.

The federal budget deficit although starting to shrink remains very large by historical standards. How much and how quickly the deficit declines will depend in part on how well the economy does over the next few years. Probably more critical, though, will be the fiscal policy choices made by lawmakers as they face the substantial changes to tax and spending policies that are slated to take effect within the next year under current law. The pace of the economic recovery has been slow since the recession ended in June 2009, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects that, under current laws governing taxes and spending, the economy will continue to grow at a sluggish pace over the next two years. That pace of growth partly reflects the dampening effect on economic activity from the higher tax rates and curbs on spending scheduled to occur this year and especially next. Although CBO projects that growth will pick up after 2013, the agency expects that the economy's output will remain below its potential until 2018 and that the unemployment rate will remain above 7 percent until 2015.

In recent years, the Congress has shown interest in powering some of the Navy s future destroyers and amphibious warfare ships with nuclear rather than conventional (petroleum-based) fuel. At the request of the former Chairman of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces of the House Committee on Armed Services, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the difference in life-cycle costs (the total costs incurred for a ship, from acquisition through operations to disposal) between powering those new surface ships with nuclear reactors and equipping them with conventional engines.

In response to a request by the Subcommittee on Defense, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has examined ways to establish a clearer relationship between the readiness of the armed forces and operation and maintenance spending by the Department of Defense. CBO's analysis is attached.

Chairman Akin, Ranking Member McIntyre, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the Navy's plans for its shipbuilding programs and corresponding budget. My submitted statement today reprises the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) May 2010 study entitled An Analysis of the Navy's Fiscal Year 2011 Shipbuilding Plan, which addresses the most recent long-term plan released by the Navy. The Navy's budget submission for 2012 (including information on the intentions for 2013 through 2016) makes only minor changes to the 2011 plan and does not change the basic information included in CBO's study or even most of the details of the analysis. Until this year, the Navy has been required by law to submit a report to the Congress each year that projects the service's shipbuilding requirements, procurement plans, inventories, and costs over the coming 30 years. Since 2006, CBO has been performing an independent analysis of the Navy's latest shipbuilding plan at the request of this Subcommittee. After summarizing the ship requirements and purchases described in the Navy's 2011 plan, CBO's latest study assessed their implications for the Navy's funding needs and ship inventories through 2040. According to its most recent 30-year plan, the Navy envisions buying a total of 276 ships over 30 years at an average annual cost of about $16 billion (in 2010 dollars) for new construction alone, or roughly $18 billion for total shipbuilding (which includes new-ship construction, refueling of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and other costs related to shipbuilding). By comparison, CBO's estimates of the costs of the Navy's plan are about $3 billion a year higher an average of $19 billion per year for new construction or $21 billion per year for total shipbuilding. There is nothing in the Navy's 2012 budget request that suggests those numbers will change significantly., Testimony before the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces Committee on Armed Services U.S. House of Representatives.

As the Department of Defense s (DoD s) Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites reach the end of their service lives, the department plans to replace them with ones that can counter deliberate interference by generating stronger signals. Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicates that an alternative approach namely, improving military receivers to retain the GPS signal even in the presence of such jamming would be less expensive than DoD s plan for upgrading its constellation of GPS satellites. Furthermore, the alternative would yield benefits almost a decade earlier than DoD s plan. However, the improvements to military receivers could make them larger and heavier (and thereby less useful to personnel operating on foot) until they could incorporate the substantial gains that have been achieved in miniaturization in other applications.

Today, the U.S. Navy's fleet numbers 284 ships, including 29 amphibious warfare ships. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report reviews the size, missions, and use of the Navy's amphibious warfare ships and related expeditionary forces under the Navy's 2012 shipbuilding plan. The 2012 plan, the Navy's latest 30-year shipbuilding plan, has a force of 33 amphibious warfare ships as its objective. The primary purpose of those ships in wartime is to carry Marine Corps units overseas and to support and sustain them as they deploy ashore. Amphibious forces represent a significant investment of taxpayer dollars. Over the next 30 years, the Navy plans to purchase 20 new amphibious ships at a total cost of about $50 billion (in 2011 dollars). That total does not include the personnel costs and annual operating costs for fuel, maintenance, and training the Navy will face to use its amphibious warfare force. A force of 33 ships represents a fiscally constrained compromise from the Marine Corps' objective of having 38 amphibious ships. That 38-ship goal represents the number of ships the Navy and Marine Corps would like to have in the fleet to execute an opposed amphibious assault using two Marine expeditionary brigades in the event of war. Under the 2012 plan, the Navy's inventory of amphibious ships would reach at least 33 ships for 15 of the next 30 years between 2017 and 2031. The rest of the time, from 2012 to 2016 and from 2032 to 2041, the amphibious force would fall below that objective. Over the next 30 years, the force would never reach 38 ships. CBO's projections indicate that the Navy's 2012 plan would enable the service to provide overseas presence throughout the next 30 years that would be similar to or exceed the presence it provided in 2007. However, the Navy would not be able to meet the 2010 goals of combatant commanders, which are fiscally unconstrained, for peacetime amphibious capabilities around the globe.

During the past decade s operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has come to rely heavily on the continuous or nearly continuous presence overhead of both manned and unmanned aircraft to support ground troops. Unmanned aircraft that remain aloft in particular locations (or orbits) have been primarily used to provide timely information about activities on the ground and to attack ground targets on short notice. Most prominent among these aircraft are the Department of Defense s (DoD's) fleets of unmanned Predators, Reapers, and Global Hawks; however, satellites and manned conventional aircraft, including fighters and long-range bombers, have also contributed.

The federal government is confronting significant and fundamental budgetary challenges. If current policies are continued in coming years, the aging of the population and the rising cost of health care will boost federal spending, as a share of the economy, well above the amount of revenues that the federal government has collected in the past. As a result, putting the federal budget on a sustainable path will require significant changes in spending policies, tax policies, or both. The task of addressing those formidable challenges is complicated by the weakness of the economy and the large numbers of unemployed workers, empty houses, and underused factories and offices. Changes that might be made to federal spending or tax policies could have a substantial impact on the pace of economic recovery during the next few years as well as on the nation's output and people's income over the longer term., Testimony before the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, U.S. Congress.

In most years, the Department of Defense (DoD) provides a five- or six-year plan, called the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), associated with the budget that it submits to the Congress. Because decisions made in the near term can have consequences for the defense budget well beyond that period, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has examined the programs and plans contained in DoD s FYDP and projected their budgetary impact in subsequent years. For this analysis, CBO used the FYDP provided to the Congress in April 2011, which covers fiscal years 2012 to 2016. CBO s projections span the years 2012 to 2030.

This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report presents the agency's projections of federal spending and revenues over the coming decades. Under current law, an aging population and rapidly rising health care costs will sharply increase federal spending for health care programs and Social Security. If revenues remained at their historical average share of gross domestic product (GDP), such spending growth would cause federal debt to grow to unsustainable levels. If policymakers are to put the federal government on a sustainable budgetary path, they will need to increase revenues substantially as a percentage of GDP, decrease spending significantly from projected levels, or adopt some combination of those two approaches. In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this report makes no recommendations.

This volume is one of a series of reports on the state of the budget and the economy that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issues each year. It satisfies the requirement of section 202(e) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 for CBO to submit to the Committees on the Budget periodic reports about fiscal policy and to provide baseline projections of the federal budget. In keeping with CBO s mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this report makes no recommendations. The baseline spending projections were prepared by CBO s Budget Analysis Division. The revenue estimates were prepared by the agency s Tax Analysis Division, with assistance from the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. The economic projections were prepared by CBO s Macroeconomic Analysis Division.

CBO's analysis of VHA's costs indicated the following: B In 2010, VHA spent $1.9 billion to treat 400,000 OCO patients. VHA obligated $4,800 per OCO patient, on average, compared with an average of $8,800 per patient for veterans from all eras who were being treated at VHA. OCO veterans are typically younger and healthier than the average VHA patient and as a result are less expensive to treat; indeed, the amount of resources devoted to the average OCO veteran is similar to that devoted to the average non-OCO veteran under the age of 45. Thus, although OCO patients made up 7 percent of the veterans VHA treated in 2010, they were responsible for only 4 percent of the total amount that VHA obligated for medical care and research. The medical costs associated with VHA's treatment of OCO veterans could, in CBO's estimation, total between $40 billion and $55 billion over the 10-year period from 2011 through 2020, depending on the number of military personnel deployed to overseas contingencies in the future and the rate of growth of medical expenditures per person. That amount would be in addition to the $6 billion that VHA had spent on OCO veterans' health care by the end of 2010. VHA is funded by annual discretionary appropriations (unlike Medicare, for example, which is funded by permanent appropriations); therefore, the estimated amounts would only be spent if lawmakers decided in the future to fully fund the care that OCO veterans are receiving from VHA under current policies.

This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study, prepared at the request of the Senate Committee on the Budget, projects the costs of the Department of Defense's plan for national defense for the years 2012 to 2030. The study is the latest in an annual series that CBO has published for the past eight years. In particular, it updates the projections contained in CBO's Long-Term Implications of the Fiscal Year 2011 Defense Budget, published in February 2011. In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this study makes no recommendations. A future CBO study will examine the implications that possible constraints on defense budgets might have for the future size, composition, and capabilities of the military services.

At the request of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has prepared an analysis of the President's budgetary proposals for fiscal year 2012, which were released on February 14, 2011. The analysis uses CBO's economic assumptions and estimating techniques, rather than the Administration's, to project how the proposals in the President's budget would affect federal revenues and outlays and the U.S. economy. For tax provisions, the analysis incorporates estimates prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. This analysis follows and supplements CBO's "Preliminary Analysis of the President's Budget for 2012," which was released on March 18, 2011, as an attachment to a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. CBO has not changed its estimates from the ones presented there. Chapter 1 of this report reiterates that document, with additional figures and details about the differences between CBO's and the Administration's budget estimates. Chapter 2 presents CBO's analysis of how the President's proposals would affect the overall economy (relative to what would occur under current law) and, in turn, indirectly affect the budget.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) regularly issues a compendium of budget options to help inform federal lawmakers about the implications of possible policy choices. This volume--one of several reports that CBO produces regularly for the House and Senate Committees on the Budget--presents more than 100 options for altering federal spending and revenues. Nearly all of the options would reduce federal budget deficits. From 1983 to 1997, the reports in this series were titled Reducing the Deficit: Spending and Revenue Options. In 2000, at a time of budget surpluses, the title was changed to Budget Options. This volume returns to the earlier title because the budgetary context has shifted dramatically since 2000. The report begins with an introductory chapter that describes the current budgetary picture and the uses and limitations of this volume. Chapters 2 and 3 present options that would reduce mandatory and discretionary spending, respectively. Chapter 4 contains options that would increase revenues from various kinds of taxes and fees. The options discussed in this report stem from a variety of sources, including legislative proposals, various Administrations' budget proposals, Congressional staff, other government entities, and private groups. The options are intended to reflect a range of possibilities rather than to provide a ranking of priorities or a comprehensive list. The inclusion or exclusion of a particular policy change does not represent an endorsement or rejection by CBO. In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this report makes no recommendations. Some previous reports in this series grouped spending options according to budget function (the 20 programmatic categories into which the government's activities are frequently divided).

In most years, the Department of Defense (DoD) provides a five- or six-year plan, called the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), associated with the budget that it submits to the Congress. Because decisions made in the near term can have consequences for the defense budget well beyond that period, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has examined the programs and plans contained in DoD's FYDP and projected their budgetary impact in subsequent years. For this analysis, CBO used the FYDP provided to the Congress in April 2011, which covers fiscal years 2012 to 2016., Testimony: Statement of David E. Mosher, Assistant Director of Natonal Security before the Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives.

DoD's 30-year shipbuilding and aviation plans enable the Congress to assess the long-term effects of the incremental decisions that are made each year in the annual authorization and appropriation process. Ships and aircraft take decades to develop and procure, and those ships and aircraft often remain in the inventory for decades more. In the absence of a 30-year plan, the cumulative effects of those annual decisions may not be well understood. For example, during the 1990s, well before the Congress instituted the requirement for a 30-year shipbuilding plan, attack submarines were bought at an average rate of about half a submarine a year. At the time, that historically low rate did not affect the ability of the Navy to meet its inventory goal because the Navy had more than enough submarines to meet that goal for years to come. However, once the Navy begins to retire three or four submarines per year in the latter part of the 2010s, it will not be able to meet its inventory goal in the 2020s and 2030s without purchasing large numbers of submarines within a short period of time in an environment of constrained budgets. Although the existence of a 30-year plan in the 1990s might not have changed the amounts that the Congress appropriated for submarines, it would have provided more information about the long-term consequences of those appropriation decisions. A 10-year plan would not have illuminated those longer-term challenges., Testimony before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Committee on Armed Services U.S. House of Representatives.

Through 2011, at the direction of the Congress, the Department of the Navy issued annual reports that described its plans for ship construction over the coming 30 years. But in the Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 (Public Law 111- 383), the Congress relieved the Navy of that requirement except when the Department of Defense submits the Quadrennial Defense Review. Instead, the report accompanying the legislation required the Navy to submit a 10-year shipbuilding plan if requested by the appropriate oversight committees. Consequently, for fiscal year 2012, the Navy's intentions for shipbuilding came out in stages, in documents that can be combined with one another and with the plan of the previous year to yield a new 30-year plan comparable to previous ones. In late February, the Navy provided briefing slides highlighting the major changes the service had made in the schedule for constructing new ships and retiring older ones during the next 10 years, as well as providing some information about the expected cost of the shipbuilding called for in the new schedule. In late May, at the request of the House Armed Services Committee, the Navy provided tables showing a 30-year schedule that made a number of adjustments to the schedule released one year earlier. CBO viewed those briefing slides and tables as reflecting a 2012 shipbuilding plan that represents a modification to the previous year's plan.

At the direction of the Congress, the Department of the Navy issues annual reports that describe its plans for ship construction over the coming 30 years. The latest report--issued in February and covering fiscal years 2011 to 2040--contains some significant changes in the Navy's long-term goals for shipbuilding. The new plan appears to increase the required size of the fleet compared with earlier plans, while reducing the number of ships to be purchased--and thus the costs for ship construction--over the next three decades. Despite those reductions, the total costs of carrying out the 2011 plan would be much higher than the funding levels that the Navy has received in recent years, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)., Testimony of Eric J. Labs before the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives.

In most years, the Department of Defense (DoD) provides a five- or six-year plan, called the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), associated with the budget that it submits to the Congress. Because decisions made in the near term can have consequences for the defense budget well beyond that period, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has examined the programs and plans contained in DoD's FYDP and projected their budgetary impact in subsequent years. For this analysis, CBO used the FYDP provided to the Congress in April 2010, which covers fiscal years 2011 through 2015-the most recent plan available when this analysis was conducted. CBO's projections span 2011 through 2028.

Mr. Chairman, Senator Graham, and Members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) analysis of compensation for members of the armed forces. To attract and retain the military personnel it needs, the Department of Defense (DoD) must offer a competitive compensation package--one that adequately rewards service members for their training and skills as well as for the rigors of military life, particularly the prospect of wartime deployment., Testimony before the Subcommittee on Personnel, Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate.

The Congress created the Arsenal Support Program Initiative (ASPI) in 2001 to help maintain the viability of the Army s three manufacturing arsenals. Owned and operated by the federal government, those arsenals which are located in Rock Island, Illinois, Watervliet, New York, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas provide a variety of services, including the manufacture, renovation, and demilitarization of weapons and other equipment. The broad intent of the ASPI is to encourage collaboration between the Army and commercial firms to preserve the arsenals capabilities and to reduce the costs to the government of operating and maintaining those arsenals. Originally established as a two-year demonstration program, the ASPI has subsequently been extended through a series of National Defense Authorization Acts. The program is currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2011.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides health care at little or no charge to more than 5 million veterans annually. Medical services are provided through the inpatient and outpatient facilities run by the Veterans Health Administration. Those services include routine health assessments, readjustment counseling, surgery, hospitalization, and nursing home care. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the future costs for VA to treat enrolled veterans will be substantially higher (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than recent appropriations for that purpose, partly because more veterans are likely to seek care in the VA system but mostly because health care costs per enrolled veteran are projected to increase faster than the overall price level. Under two scenarios that CBO examined, the total real resources (in 2010 dollars) necessary to provide health care services to all veterans who seek treatment at VA would range from $69 billion to $85 billion in 2020, representing cumulative increases of roughly 45 percent to 75 percent since 2010.

At the direction of the Congress, the Department of the Navy issues annual reports that describe its plans for ship construction over the coming 30 years. The latest report-issued in February and covering fiscal years 2011 to 2040-contains some significant changes in the Navy's long-term goals for shipbuilding. The new plan appears to increase the required size of the fleet compared with earlier plans, while reducing the number of ships to be purchased-and thus the costs for ship construction- over the next three decades. Despite those reductions, the total costs of carrying out the 2011 plan would be much higher than the funding levels that the Navy has received in recent years, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Presented at Personnel and National Security: A Quantitative Approach (Unclass), held 25-28 Jan 2010 at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD. The original document contains color images.

At the direction of the Congress, the Department of the Navy issues annual reports that describe its plans for ship construction over the coming 30 years. The latest report-issued in February and covering fiscal years 2011 to 2040-contains some significant changes in the Navy's long-term goals for shipbuilding. The new plan appears to increase the required size of the fleet compared with earlier plans, while reducing the number of ships to be purchased-and thus the costs for ship construction- over the next three decades. Despite those reductions, the total costs of carrying out the 2011 plan would be much higher than the funding levels that the Navy has received in recent years, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The United States Navy and Marine Corps maintain a fleet of more than 1,100 tactical fighters that provide capabilities for air-to-air combat and air-to-ground attack. As of January 2010, that force consisted of about 640 F/A-18A/B/C/D Hornets, nearly 400 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, and roughly 150 AV-8B Harriers. Current modernization plans call for replacing all of the Hornets and Harriers with about 100 more Super Hornets and 680 F-35B/C Joint Strike Fighters (JSFs). (See Box 1 for a brief description of those fighters.) The high usage rate of fighters in military operations over the past decade coupled with delays in the development of the JSF, however, have raised concerns within the Department of the Navy that its inventory of fighters will drop significantly below the level needed for the planned force structure over the next 10 to 15 years. In particular, in the absence of modifications to their airframe structure, Hornets are now projected to reach the end of their service life faster than they can be replaced with JSFs. To mitigate potential inventory shortfalls, the department is investigating ways to extend the service life of its Hornets as well as changes it could make to how the fleet is organized and employed to reduce the number of aircraft needed for operations. The Navy could also reduce projected inventory shortfalls by purchasing more Super Hornets than current plans call for until the JSF can be delivered in large numbers.

Over the past seven years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has published a series of reports about its projections of the resources that could be required over the long term (typically two decades) to carry out the nation's defense plans. This report presents CBO's analysis of the Department of Defense's (DOD's) 2010 budget request, which was transmitted in 2009, including projections of resource requirements for fiscal years 20100 through 2028., CBO Study.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that if current laws and policies remained unchanged, the federal budget would show a deficit of about $1.3 trillion for fiscal year 2010 (see Summary Table 1). At 9.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), that deficit would be slightly smaller than the shortfall of 9.9 percent of GDP ($1.4 trillion) posted in 2009. Last year's deficit was the largest as a share of GDP since the end of World War II, and the deficit expected for 2010 would be the second largest. Moreover, if legislation is enacted in the next several months that either boosts spending or reduces revenues, the 2010 deficit could equal or exceed last year's shortfall. The large 2009 and 2010 deficits reflect a combination of factors: an imbalance between revenues and spending that predates the recession and turmoil in financial markets, sharply lower revenues and elevated spending associated with those economic conditions, and the costs of various federal policies implemented in response to those conditions.

In the first 6.5 years of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), U.S. military casualties exceeded 3,400 hostile deaths. 800 nonhostile deaths (due to disease, nonbattle injury, and other causes), and over 31,000 troops wounded in action. Casualty rates in Iraq have been considerably lower that during the Vietnam conflict, and a greater proportion of troops wounded in Iraq survive their wounds. Before the surge in troop levels that began in early 2007, the survival rate was 90.4% in Iraq as compared to 86.5% in Vietnam. Wounded-in-action rates increased during the first few months of the surge, but declined below presurge levels after the number of U.S. brigades in Iraq climbed from 15 to its maximum level of 20. Wounds during the surge were somewhat more lethal than previously, but because there were fewer wounding incidents the net effect was a reduction in the hostile death rate., Published in Military Medicine Journal v175 n4 p220-226, April 2010.

To discuss the challenges that the Navy is facing in its plans for building its future fleet. Specifically, the Subcommittee asked the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to examine three matters: the Navy's draft shipbuilding plan for fiscal year 2011, the effect that replacing Ohio class submarines with a new class of submarines will have on the Navy's shipbuilding program, and the number of ships that may be needed to support ballistic missile defense from the sea., Testimony before the Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Committee on Armed Services U.S. House of Representatives.

Testimony before the Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives.

Testimony before the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives.

Human activities are yielding rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and other gases and particulates and are also greatly altering the Earth's land cover. A scientific consensus has emerged that those activities, if allowed to continue unabated, will have extensive, highly uncertain, but potentially serious and costly impacts on regional climates and ocean conditions throughout the world. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper - prepared at the request of the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources - presents an overview of the current understanding of the impacts of climate change in the United States, emphasizing the wide range of uncertainty about the magnitude and timing of those impacts and the implications of that uncertainty for the formulation of effective policy responses. The analysis draws from numerous published sources to summarize the current state of climate science and provide a conceptual framework for addressing climate change as an economic concern. In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, the paper makes no recommendations., The original document contains color images. All DTIC reproductions will be in black and white.

This presentation updates the analysis of defense plans contained in the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) March 2008 Web document The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Detailed Update for Fiscal Year 2008 to account for changes incorporated in the President's budget for fiscal year 2009 and in the 2009 Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). The presentation provides additional data not found in CBO's January 2009 publication Long-Term Implications of the Fiscal Year 2009 Future Years Defense Program. Both of those documents respond to standing requests from the Senate Budget Committee. This presentation does not incorporate changes to the FYDP that have resulted from Congressional action on the President's 2009 budget request. (In particular, it does not display amounts appropriated for defense by the Congress for fiscal year 2009.) Nor does it incorporate changes to the defense program proposed by the Obama Administration and under consideration by the Congress as part of its action on the fiscal year 2010 defense budget. Charts in this detailed update use the concepts "steady state" and "half-life" to assess the Department of Defense's (DoD's) investment plans and weapon systems. Those concepts and how CBO estimates their values are explained more fully in Appendix A at the end of the presentation. The updated displays in this presentation differ in some instances from those in previous presentations. In some cases, CBO has altered the display format to include additional historical data; in other cases, it has revised its historical database of procurement quantities and funding, as well as its projections of the inventories of weapon systems that the military services plan to sustain. CBO also, in some instances, departs from previous presentations by using different color schemes for the displays.

We estimate the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of permanent and transitory shocks to house price appreciation. Besides borrowing constraints, we consider two different models under which those shocks may affect consumption. In the first one, we treat housing as a risky asset. In the second one, housing has a role as a consumption and as an investment good. In both, changes in the rate of house price appreciation may affect nonhousing consumption. Shocks to appreciation rates may happen when increases in future house prices are expected to differ from the current ones because heterogeneity, market failures or errors in expectations. We test the implications of those models empirically using the PSID's imputed total consumption from food consumption and self-reported house values, and base our identification strategy on two sources of variation in the appreciation rate. The first source depends on the fact that home prices are far more cyclical in areas where the supply of housing is relatively inelastic, causing the permanent and the transitory changes in appreciation rates to vary significantly by area. The second source is households? perceptions about which parts of shocks to appreciation rates are permanent or transitory. We model households? self-reported rate of appreciation as an AR(1) process and use both the Hodrick-Prescott and the Kalman filter to separate households? perceptions about permanent and transitory shocks to appreciation. Our results show that (1) consumption responses to house wealth shocks vary greatly by area and depend upon the area-specific levels of temporal persistence and variance of those shocks; (2) the overall MPC out of those shocks is 3.5%; (3) the MPC out of permanent shocks is between 3.4% and 9.1%; and (4) the MPC out of transitory shocks is between 0.5% and 3.3%.

As articulated in their respective long-term shipbuilding plans, the Navy and the Coast Guard intend to spend more than $47 billion combined over the next 20 years to purchase a total of 83 small combatants. Of that number, the Navy plans to purchase 53 littoral combat ships (LCSs), in addition to the two that were purchased in 2005 and 2006. The LCSs will be built using two different hull designs--one, a semiplaning monohull; the other, an aluminum trimaran--although the exact mix of hulls has not yet been determined. The ships will carry one of three sets of equipment, or mission packages, depending on which mission they are expected to perform (antiship, antisubmarine, or countermine warfare). The Coast Guard plans to buy five new high-endurance cutters, commonly referred to as national security cutters (NSCs), and 25 new medium-endurance cutters, often called offshore patrol cutters (OPCs). Three other NSCs ordered prior to 2009 have been built or are currently under construction. Although the Coast Guard plans to begin buying the offshore patrol cutter in 2015, it is not yet certain what the OPC will look like or if it will beconfined to one class of ship. Together, the NSCs and OPCs, which are designed to operate 50 nautical miles beyond the U.S. coastline, are part of the resources and force structure that make up the Coast Guard's "Deepwater assets."

This report follows up on the document that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released in March 2009 titled "A Preliminary Analysis of the President's Budget and an Update of CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook," which was based on the President's preliminary budget submission. Estimates in this report, which was prepared at the request of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, reflect the final set of proposals included in the Budget of the United States Government: Fiscal Year 2010 (May 2009). The results of CBO's updated analysis are similar to those released in March. CBO now estimates a 10-year deficit of $9.1 trillion under the President's policies - about $130 billion lower than it estimated three months ago (a difference of about 1.4 percent of the cumulative deficit over the 2010-2019 period). That difference reflects the details of the proposals and some technical changes in CBO's estimates of the budgetary impact of those proposals. As with the March report, this analysis incorporates revenue estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). CBO has not updated its baseline budget projections or its economic forecast since the preliminary analysis of the President's budget was released in March., The original document contains color images. All DTIC reproductions will be in black and white.

In the past decade, the Army initiated two programs designed to dramatically alter the way its combat forces are equipped and organized. The Modularity Initiative would reorganize the Army's warfighting forces from divisions containing 12,000 to 17,000 or more soldiers to a larger number of smaller, interchangeable, and independent brigade combat teams (BCTs) of 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers. Before changes in the program were made on the basis of Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates's announcement in April 2009, the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program would have, among other things, replaced the Army's heavy tracked armored vehicles developed in the 1960s and 1970s with lighter and more mobile combat vehicles that would be equally as survivable. (See Summary Box 1.) Army leaders have contended that together those two programs would yield an Army that could respond to crises around the world more quickly and that would be more mobile and technically sophisticated-and, hence, more effective-once it arrived., CBO Study

As part of ongoing efforts to protect the United States and its allies from attack by ballistic missiles, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is working to deploy a missile defense system in Europe. As proposed, the system would be fielded by 2013 and would include interceptor missiles in silos to be built in Poland, a tracking radar in the Czech Republic, and another radar at an unspecified location near Iran. The goal of the system, according to MDA, is to "defend [U.S.] allies and deployed forces in Europe from limited Iranian longrange threats and expand protection of [the] U.S. homeland."1, CBO Study

The United States Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps maintain an inventory of approximately 3,500 fixed-wing fighter and attack aircraft that provide unsurpassed air-to-air and air-to-ground combat capabilities. Most of those aircraft were purchased at high annual rates during the 1980s, however, and are expected to reach the end of their service life at similarly high rates over the next decade. To counteract those impending retirements and simultaneously modernize their fleets, the service branches have outlined acquisition plans for equipping their force structures with new aircraft over the next 25 years. Specifically, the Air Force plans to replace the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, and the F-15 Eagle with two types of aircraft: the F-22 Raptor and the F-35A Lightning II, the land-based version of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).1 The Navy and Marine Corps plan to replace the AV-8B Harrier and F/A-18A/B/C/D Hornet with three types of aircraft: the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet; the F-35B, the short takeoff vertical landing version of the JSF; and the F-35C, the carrier-based version of the JSF., CBO Study

The Army's plans for operating its forces rely on the ability of those forces to rapidly process and exchange large amounts of information during battle. The availability of new, high-capacity radios purchased by the Army under a number of wireless communications programs is key to the service s achieving that capability. (Capacity refers to the rate at which a radio can transmit and receive data measured in bits per second.) The Army divides its wireless communications efforts into two sets: tactical programs and strategic programs. Tactical programs enable Army units in the field to communicate among themselves when deployed to conduct a particular military operation. For the most part, strategic programs provide Army units with long-range communications capabilities using satellites. In particular, strategic programs enable units in the field to communicate with higher headquarters (above the division and brigade headquarters level, for example) located outside the vicinity of the units operations; they also enable communications among higher headquarters and other Army facilities and installations. In this report, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) summarizes the content of the Army's wireless communications programs and how that content has changed during the past several years. CBO also examines the past and projected costs of those programs and the extent to which the Army's plans for one of the most expensive of its tactical wireless programs the Joint Tactical Radio System are consistent with the service's plans for equipping its future forces.

Decisions about national defense that are made today -- whether they involve weapon systems, military compensation, or numbers of personnel -- can have long-lasting effects on the composition of the nation's armed forces and the budgetary resources needed to support them. Over the past six years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has published a series of reports about its projections of the resources that might be needed over the long term to carry out the Bush Administration's plans as expressed in the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). The FYDP is prepared by the Department of Defense (DoD) for each fiscal year and submitted to the Congress as part of the President's budget request. This paper, like CBO's previous reports, provides long-term projections (in this case, through 2026) of the costs of DoD's current plans -- that is, the plans contained in the 2009 FYDP, which specifically addresses fiscal years 2009 through 2013. The 2009 FYDP was transmitted in April 2008, and it reflects changes to the department's programs and priorities since February 2007. The 2009 FYDP and CBO's projections of its long-term implications exclude potential future supplemental or emergency appropriations; CBO's projections include additional appropriations that have already been enacted.

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the long-term implications of the Department of Defense's (DoD's) plans. My testimony describes the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) most recent projections (in this case, through 2026) for the implications of the 2009 Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), which specifically addresses fiscal years 2009 through 2010. The 2009 FYDF transmitted in April 2008, reflects changes to the department's programs and priorities since February 2007. The 2009 FYDP and CBO's projections of its long-term implications exclude potential future supplemental or emergency appropriations; CBO's projections include additional appropriations that have already been enacted. CBO's projections exclude program changes announced by the Bush Administration after it released the 2009 FYDP and any changes proposed by the Obama Administration so tar. Overall, the budgetary implications of DoD's current plans are similar to those described in CBO's previous projections: Carrying out plans proposed in the FYDP would require sustaining annual defense handing over the long term at higher real (inflation-adjusted) levels than those that occurred at the peak of the buildup in the mid-1980s. Four factors in particular account for the projected high level of defense spending under the FYDP: Plans to purchase more new military equipment over the next several years and then to sustain that rate of procurement over the longer term; Plans, as part of military transformation, to develop and eventually produce weapon systems that provide new capabilities systems whose estimated costs are also increasing; Plans to increase the size of military forces and the growing costs of pay and benefits for DoD's military and civilian personnel; and Plans to meet the rising costs of operation and maintenance (O&M) for aging equipment as well as for newer, more complex equipment., A statement of J. Michael Gilmore, Assistant Director.

This presentation updates the analysis of current defense plans contained in the Congressional Budget Office s (CBO s) April 2007 Web document The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Detailed Update for Fiscal Year 2007 to account for changes incorporated in the President s budget for fiscal year 2008 and in the 2008 Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). The presentation provides additional data not found in CBO s December 2007 publication The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Summary Update for Fiscal Year 2008. Both of those documents respond to standing requests from the Senate Budget Committee. This presentation does not incorporate changes to the FYDP resulting from Congressional action on the President s 2008 budget request. Charts in this detailed update use the concepts steady state and half-life for the Department of Defense s (DoD s) investment plans and weapon systems. Those concepts and how CBO estimates their values are explained more fully in Appendix A at the end of the presentation. The updated displays in this presentation differ in some instances from those in previous presentations. In some cases, CBO has altered the display format to include additional historical data; in other cases, it has revised its historical database of procurement quantities and funding, as well as its projections of the inventories of weapon systems that the military services plan to sustain. CBO also, in some instances, departs from previous presentations by using different color schemes for the displays.

In response to Congressional direction, the Department of the Navy began (with the submission of the fiscal year 2003 President s budget) issuing annual reports that describe its 30-year plans for ship construction. In the report released in February 2006, the Navy presented its fiscal year 2007 plan to expand its fleet from 285 battle force ships in 2006 to 313 by 2020 and beyond. In May 2006, CBO issued a study analyzing that plan and estimating its potential costs. Since May 2006, the Navy has provided two updates to its 313-ship plan, one for fiscal year 2008 and one for fiscal year 2009. There are a number of differences among the plans. The 2007 and 2008 plans both assumed annual costs of $16.1 billion for new construction, but the 2008 plan increased the total number of ships purchased over a 30-year period to 293, compared with 280 for the 2007 plan. The increase of 13 in the number of ships purchased mainly reflected an acceleration of the building of DDG(X) destroyers, which are intended to replace today s Arleigh Burke class of guided-missile destroyers, and a shift in the time period under consideration (the Navy intended to buy more ships in 2037 than in 2007, so moving from a 2007 2036 planning window to a 2008 2037 window increases the number of vessels bought over 30 years). The 2009 plan envisions purchasing three more ships than the 2008 plan 296 and it appears to increase the Navy s estimate of the costs to implement the plan by about 50 percent (see Table 1). Although the number of ships purchased under the 2008 and 2009 plans differs only slightly, the Navy made significant changes in the numbers of some of the types of ships it would purchase under the two plans., Testimonybefore the Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives.