布鲁金斯学会-新冠疫情与美国联邦预算（英）-2022.8.pdfVIP

AUGUST 2022 THE COVID PANDEMIC AND THE FEDERAL BUDGET Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated policy responses generated large federal bud- get deficits in recent years. The good news is that these factors are expected to have mainly short-term effects on the federal budget. The bad news is that – as the pandemic recedes, the associated policies expire, and the economy transitions to a more normal state of affairs – the government inherits a much larger national debt than was projected before the pandemic, and other fiscal parameters return more or less to their pre-COVID trajectories, which already were and still are unsustainable and will eventually require federal action. How quickly those actions are needed will depend on many factors, including the path of interest rates. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors thank Josh Gotbaum for comments, and Swati Joshi and Nora Cahill for research assistance. Gale thanks Arnold Ventures for generous research support. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed to any other person or any organization. DISCLOSURES Auerbach is the Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law and Director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Gale is the Arjay and Fran- ces Fearing Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy at the Brookings Institution and codirector of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports, published online. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its au