From 1990 to 2006, the UK financed five times as many public-private partnerships to improve transportation infrastructure as the United States did. With low interest rates and high unemployment, the timing is presumably right to invest in improvements to the United States’ decaying transportation infrastructure. Read more »

A new report from the Energy Information Administration offers insight into the potential for the United States to achieve “energy independence” over the next twenty or so years. A great number of things would need to come together, explains CFR’s Michael Levi on his blog “Energy, Security, and Climate,” including improved vehicle efficiency, less driving, more natural gas powered transportation, advancements in biomass fuels, and increased production from shale gas and tight oil wells. Read more »

With the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting the latest non-farm employment rate to be 7.6 percent, lagging employment remains a central challenge for policymakers.

In this post on his blog Macro and Markets, CFR’s Robert Kahn examines long-term unemployment trends and how they stack up to the current recovery through a series of charts. Kahn finds that we are witnessing a dismal exacerbation of the usual recovery in employment, putting the spotlight on improving structural and fiscal policies aimed at helping the unemployed rebuild skills and find jobs.

The Obama administration’s long-term budget projection estimates government debt as a share of GDP will remain stable until 2050, then decline, and in seventy-five years place the U.S. federal government in a net creditor position equal to around 60 percent of GDP. This is a more optimistic projection than produced by the Congressional Budget Office and independent commissions studying deficit reduction. Read more »

On Wednesday, President Obama will send his proposed budget to Capitol Hill. While it includes many ideas floated in the president’s previous budget plans, it proposes a switch to an inflation formula intended to reduce cost-of-living payments to Social Security beneficiaries, known as the chained Consumer Price Index (CPI), which has excited some deficit hawks and worried some Social Security defenders. Read more »

With low borrowing costs and elevated unemployment, Washington should seize the moment to invest in fixing the nation’s decaying infrastructure, writes CFR Adjunct Senior Fellow Peter Orszag.

“First, we need to couple immediate federal spending on public assets with substantial, credible deficit-reduction measures that are scheduled to take effect later on. Such a ‘barbell’ approach to fiscal policy would require that Republicans acknowledge the value of additional stimulus while the unemployment rate is high, and that Democrats see how Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security could be preserved and strengthened through certain cost-saving measures over time,” he says. Read more »