budget outlook. it's an article of faith among many in the party that the obama health care reform made things worse as opposed to making things better. it could be a legitimate difference of opinion that there was not the conclusion cbo came to. >> have there been any scandals in their recent history? >> it depends on what you mean by the scandal. i'm not aware of any scandals that actually involved. there was a mini scandal in one of the early years because the director had been driving staff on the cbo building which is off capitol hill using her private automobile and one year they asked for a car and it sort of came out in the press what she wanted was a chauffeured limousine and it created a great

brouhaha in the press that there was never a chauffeured limousine so i think 20 years after that there was language of to the appropriation bill foot said -- and that was all coming out of that particular evin. >> any bad numbers that may be got a little better? >> they're certainly are numbers that people didn't like and certainly people will argue whenever there are numbers people don't like that those numbers were correct. i was not able in researching my book to find any evidence of numbers that were actually cooked as opposed to once the largest wrong which is a different story entirely. cbo will tell you the only thing they know about their budget projections for example is they are wrong. they just don't know by what amount and they don't know in what direction because they are

inherently fraught with the error and they're some things that can make him a long. >> we began the conversation by talking about whether or not cbo was successful. what makes them unique in the information they provide? >> i think what makes them unique is that people actually believe at this point they are trying to provide that information without the political spin. i often have difficulty convincing people this is actually true because when they think is these people are purer than the rest of us. they don't have opinions. it's not that they don't have opinions. it's that you have to enter their opinion and to their official work and i think the reason for that is because the cbo directors and also ceo's

staff figured out of the particular point in time that if they became part of the voice in washington nobody would pay attention to them and nobody likes to work for the analytical and institution no one pays for. so i think what is different it gives them their influence and the minute they became viewed as just another partisan voice in washington people would stop listening maryland and we are talking with professor has also risen this book the congressional office honest numbers in policy-making published by georgetown university press. >> thank you very much. recently "the new york times" released their top ten books of 2011. here are the five nonfiction

titles.

more from the university of maryland. carroll when gramm talked to booktv about her latest book "the pursuit of happiness." >> "the pursuit of happiness" is the name of the book and university maryland professor and brookings institution fellow carroll gramm is the author. dr. graham, is happiness public policy? >> it is the big question these days. when i started work on this about ten years ago, people fought the few of us that were doing it were pretty loopy bid becomes a way of well-being and can measure wellbeing and quality-of-life and complement measures and right now the british government and the united nations, the chinese government, the brazilian government and i could name or are interested in implementing

the metrics. the happiness metrics and their policy decisions and so the british government just completed its first round survey where it included happiness metrics in its national statistics. >> what is the happiness metric? >> it is a measure of -- we measure wellbeing more generally. happiness is a colloquial term, but we take measures of how people -- how satisfied people are with their lives in general. how they experienced the day before and much shorter term how people evaluate their lives as a whole. we also measure positive and negative aspect how often do people worry yesterday and how often did a smile yesterday and those things will connect with different elements were aspects of people's lives. >> why is it important if we know of people are happy or not? >> will think it's an important metric complement's within come

measure stellas for an example, we find things like paradise growth and people are less happy than any economies that are growing more slowly. that doesn't mean growth isn't important but it can be unsettling for people because there's a lot of uncertainty in the quality. we also find for the samples that in come much or more. is the next table partnerships, fulfilling work, those are all very important to people's being. we were real pull to quantify. we can look at, for example, how much time matters to the happiness is it good or bad. we find other things always

present things cigarette. the breezes are just income based traces then why is there an associated. spec could you explain that if you assume all the choices are optimal rational to places as the standard economic models deutsch, than anybody purchasing a box of cigarettes is in sight and enhance their welfare but that is not what is going on. if some of what is going on as a self control or addiction problem and people are trying to stop money you could see why it might hanft the wellbeing of people to respect dr. graham, does the u.s. in any way measure happiness or well-being.

a u.s.-based firm, the gallup organization is probably the biggest provider of well being a data. through the gallup world paul. will be assessing whether or not we should be including these measures and to our sense this and other statistical gathering data. spaghetti were to include a question and we're going to love of more happiness, how would you phrase it? >> i will include at least four questions on how did you experience yesterday i was. some question along those lines, the short-term fluctuations than the people how they are living. third, a question about purpose

or meaning in your life. finally, if possible, i would also include another question which is how does your life compared to the best which is a sort of relative. so, when the brits measure happiness and the brazilians measure happiness with a find