1. As an accounting concept, OMF provides the exact relationship between the annual deficit and change in the end-of-year debt. It is unusually large and positive in 2008-2009, thus increasing the change in the debt above the deficit. The 2008-2009 OMF figures are largely swelled by financing for repayable advances to financial institutions, made to help stabilize financial markets, such as in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). As TARP payments are repaid, they appear in the OMF accounting as negative entries, thus reducing federal borrowing needs, as well as reducing increases in the debt. CBO projects that many TARP advances will be repaid in 2010-2013 and all of them by 2018, especially in the single years 2011, 2013, and 2018. In 2019, CBO projects OMF to be $18 billion, roughly the same order of magnitude as has occurred for most recent years.

2. Appendix C explains the indicators of program solvency. Because Tables F-17 and F-18 are to be compared with Tables C-1 and C-2 for the “on-time” scenarios, the same conventions and assumptions apply. Specifically, all four tables rely on assumptions of the 2009 Social Security Trustees’ Report, rather than the CBO-based study assumptions that are applied in the report other than Chapter 6 and Appendix C.