270 Energy:Auction Off the Assets of the Tennessee Valley Authority

Sources

Savings derived from 2011 CBO budget options, found on page 20 of CBO, “Reducing the Deficit: Spending and Revenue Options,” March 2011. The CBO’s estimate provides data for the 2012–2021 period. Because the annual outlays reflect the timing of the transfer (with costs in the initial years and savings in the out years), and because there is no reason to assume a significant change in these costs and savings between 2011 and the present, Heritage analysts directly applied the CBO’s estimated 2011–2021 outlays and savings to the 2016–2025 time period.

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.