500 Education, Training, Employment & Social Services:Sunset Head Start to Make Way for Better State and Local Alternatives

Sources

Savings are expressed as budget authority and were calculated by using the FY 2015 requested spending levels as found on page 108 of Department of Health and Human Services, “Fiscal Year 2015: Budget in Brief, Strengthening Health and Opportunity for All Americans”. The savings assume that current spending would continue to grow from its FY 2015 requested level at the same rate as discretionary spending over the 2016–2025 period, as specified in the most recent August 2014 CBO baseline. The alternative policy would reduce the FY 2015 level as specified. The savings represent the difference between the current and proposed policies.

Technical Notes on Scoring

CBO Baseline

Unless otherwise noted, calculations for savings for each recommendation relies on the most recent Congressional Budget Office baseline, as found in “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024,” published August 27, 2014, has been used.

Savings “Totals”

While totals for the five and 10 year savings are provided by section and for the complete set of recommendations, there are two reasons they should not be viewed as representing total savings for The Budget Book.

First, as noted in the introduction, The Heritage Foundation would recommend that the savings realized in the Function 050 Defense section would stay within the Department of Defense to strengthen the nation’s defense capabilities.

Second, the numbers cannot be deemed to represent the realized savings if every single recommendation were adopted because policy changes made in one program can impact spending levels in other programs.  Thus, the numbers in the table do not reflect any potential interactions between the various policy changes affecting spending or savings.