President’s FY14 Budget Request Includes $1 Billion for NHTF; Shows New Estimates for Tax Expenditures

President Barack Obama released his FY14 budget request to Congress on April 10 (see article later in Memo). The President’s budget request includes $1 billion for HUD’s National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) for the fifth consecutive budget cycle. The Obama Administration continues to support the NHTF by calling for mandatory funding. The NHTF is intended to be funded on the mandatory side of the budget so as not compete with HUD’s discretionary funded housing programs. However, as in past budget requests, there is no specific offset identified to fund the program.The President’s budget also includes new projections on the cost of 169 tax expenditures, including the mortgage interest deduction. In 2013, the MID is projected to cost $93,090 billion. This is less than the projection for 2013 in last year’s budget, which was $100,910 billion. This is a less sizable drop in the cost of the mortgage interest deduction than was reported earlier this year by the Joint Committee on Taxation (see Memo, 2/1).However, the five year projection for 2014 to 2018 in this year’s budget is $640,180 billion; the 2013 to 2017 projection in last year’s budget was $606,420 billion.The mortgage interest deduction remains the second largest tax expenditure, with exclusion of employer contributions for medical insurance premiums and medical care the most expensive.Click here to review all tax expenditures; see tables 16-1 to 16-4.