The forecast was finalized in November (about the same time as CBO's forecast was released in February).
1. GDP:
figure 1: GDP (black), government forecast (red square), CBO forecast (tan), February survey of professional forecasters (blue), GDPNow on March 7 (light green square), all in billions Ch.2017 $SAAR. The executive branch's gross domestic product level and current gross domestic product are calculated using the growth rates and gross domestic product levels available at the time of the forecast/immediate forecast. Source: BEA 2023Q4 2nd Edition, CBO (February), Philadelphia Fed (February), Office of Management and Budget (March)Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (March 7), and author's calculations.
Given the similar information sets available when both forecasts were produced in early November, that's even considering that CBO's forecast is conditional on existing law, while the Administration's forecast is conditional on the President's budget. In fact, the government's GDP forecast is almost unchanged from the November 2023 and 2024 SPF.
Both the Congressional Budget Office and the administration's forecasts for the 10-year Treasury yield were higher than those forecast by SPF economists. (The government trajectory is a quadratic interpolation of quarterly data because the budget only reports annual returns.)
figure 2: Ten-year Treasury yield (black), government forecast (red line), CBO forecast (tan), February survey of professional forecasters (blue), all expressed as percentages. The actual yield in 2024Q1 is based on January and February data. Government quarterly forecasts are interpolated from annual data using quadratic matching. Source: Treasury via FRED, CBO (February), Philadelphia Fed (February), Office of Management and Budget (March)and the author's calculations.
Here is a table summarizing the forecasts.
