2027年联邦信贷计划成本估计

JULY | 2026 The federal government supports some private activitiesby offering credit assistance to individuals and businesses.That assistance is provided through direct loans and guar-antees of loans made by private financial institutions. Inthis report, the Congressional Budget Office estimates thelifetime costs of new loans and loan guarantees that areprojected to be issued in 2027.1 •Guarantees made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.Analyzed on a FCRA basis, those guarantees wouldsavethe federal government $12.5 billion; on a fair-value basis, they wouldcostthe federal government$3.9 billion. •Loans and loan guarantees made by the Departmentof Housing and Urban Development (HUD).On aFCRA basis, those loans and guarantees are projectedtosave$8.7 billion; on a fair-value basis, they wouldcost$8.1 billion. Those lifetime costs can be calculated in two ways. Oneway uses procedures specified in the Federal CreditReform Act of 1990 (FCRA), and the other is based on ameasure of fair value. Using FCRA procedures—the stan-dard way in which costs of credit programs are measuredin the federal budget—CBO estimates that new loansand loan guarantees issued in 2027 would save the federalgovernment $15.3 billion over their lifetime. Using thefair-value approach, which measures the market value ofthe government’s obligations by accounting for marketrisk, CBO estimates that those loans and guaranteeswould have a lifetime cost of $51.9 billion. (Market riskis the component of financial risk that is associated withthe overall performance of the economy rather than withthe performance of a specific investment; it results fromshifts in macroeconomic conditions, such as productivityand employment, and from changes in expectations aboutfuture macroeconomic conditions.) •Student loans made by the Department ofEducation.Those loans are projected tocost$3.6 billion on a FCRA basis and $13.7 billion on afair-value basis. On both a FCRA and a fair-value basis, loans made bythe Department of Education have by far the largest sub-sidy costs. The next largest costs are for credit assistanceprovided by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) andthe Department of Energy. In this analysis, the FCRA estimates for the largest federalcredit programs and all of the fair-value estimates wereproduced by CBO. The rest of the FCRA estimates wereproduced by other federal agencies. Federal Programs That ProvideCredit AssistanceFor this report, CBO analyzed the 94 programs through Nearly two-thirds of the difference between those FCRAand fair-value estimates is attributable to three sources: which the federal government proposes to provide creditassistance in 2027. Of those 94 programs, 76 are discre-tionary, which means they are funded through annualappropriation acts. The remaining 18 are mandatory programs and other commitments. For those programs,lawmakers determine spending by setting eligibility rulesand other criteria in authorizing legislation rather thanby appropriating specific amounts each year. How CBO Projects Subsidy CostsTo compute the estimates in this analysis, CBO used its own projections of the volume of loans and cash flowsfor the largest credit programs: Fannie Mae’s and FreddieMac’s MBS guarantee programs, FHA’s single-familymortgage and reverse-mortgage guarantee programs,VA’s mortgage guarantee program, and the Departmentof Education’s student loan programs. Making suchprojections is a routine part of preparing CBO’s base-line budget projections because those programs, whichaccount for nearly 90 percent of federal credit assistance,can significantly affect the federal budget.4 The total amount of federal credit assistance projectedfor 2027 is $1.9 trillion, consisting of new directloans that total $216 billion and new guarantees thatcover $1.7 trillion in loans. Most federal credit assis-tance—87 percent of the total amount—is provided bythe few programs that offer mortgage guarantees and stu-dent loans. By far, the largest federal credit programs arethose of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that guarantee mortgage-backed securities (MBSs).2Together, those two entitiesare projected to provide $1.0 trillion in new guaranteesin 2027. For smaller federal credit programs, which are mostlyfunded by discretionary appropriations, CBO generallyprojects that subsidy costs would grow at the rate ofinflation—the same approach the agency uses to proj-ect most discretionary appropriations under currentlaw.5Because CBO does not estimate cash flows forthose smaller credit programs, their estimated subsidycosts are based on cash flow estimates prepared by theAdministration, which reflect the President’s proposedfunding for 2027. CBO’s baseline projections of subsidycosts for federal credit programs are broadly similar tothose produced for this report using FCRA procedures. Mandatory programs and commitments account for70 percent of the total projected dollar value of fed-eral loans and loan