Will COVID-19 Spending Be a Tipping Point: Toward Long-term Fiscal Sustainability?

Organizations such as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Government Accountability Office (GAO), Department of the Treasury (Treasury), and two bipartisan commissions established consequent to the 2007-2009 financial crisis, have long highlighted the peril of the burgeoning federal debt and relentless trajectory of fiscal commitments to long-term fiscal sustainability.1 The current path is unsustainable. In its November 2010 report, Restoring America's Future, the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force's (Domenici-Rivlin)3 said: "The federal budget is on a dangerous, unsustainable path. The DomeniciRivlin plan included restraining health care costs; strengthening social security; creating a simple, pro-growth tax system; freezing domestic discretionary and defense spending; and reforming and enforcing the budget process. 7. Turn the Great Resignation into the great opportunity through increased workforce engagement and empowerment, focused on valueadded analytic work.14 Strengthen partnerships with program managers to realize the systematic measurement of performance and development of cost information called for in the CFO Act, and to integrate performance and financial information used in day-to-day decisions.