>> that vote was 55-43. the director of the congressional budget office testified on capitol hill today. he was asked about the recent three week budget deal and healthcare costs. that is next on c-span2. then immigration and government funding later able to retirement strategies the head of the office talked

about the u.s. economic outlook iand the federal debt at an oversight hearing. keith hall was asked about health care costs, immigration policy and government funding. he testified before the senate budget committee. i think this has the potential to get a lot of good information. good morning and welcome to the congressional budget office i'm proud to say this is the third such installment of the continued oversight under my chairmanship and i'm glad to see the house budget committee will follow the lead with additional oversight later this month. we have a congressional budget act that provides the committee with the authority to review the continuing basis by the congressional budget office of

its functions and duties. present the opportunity to review the performance and served as the forum for discussing ways in which it can be more effective and attentive to the needs of congress. while improving its operations, the first director of the cbo instructed staff in the 1976 memo and said i work in the publications must always be balanced, thorough and free. more than 40 years later congress and other policymakers in thand the public still depenn cbo to provide objective, transparent and timely budgetary and economic analysis. one of the difficulties in the office of course is they have to forecast, and that is especially difficult when it's about the future. we do want to have the best possible answers, and of course

we always want them praised in our own way. we've been exploring the request for morehe transparency, forgetting to see the model and i think we are also asking for the main assumption used to reach the conclusions. if the assumptions are good and pretty comprehensive, i think we will have more confidence in the results. this will be the first of many hearings thiss year in 201 2016e held 13 hearings to find a better way to budget. the ones i could do without legislation are done, the main one was to give the budget to the minority five days before the budget markup with amendments to be submitted early so that side-by-side could be developed and better yet ones that came from both sides of the aisle were similar amendments to get together for a better solution. i still have a lot of hope for that and anticipate doing that

again. now last year was a busy time for the committee and we approved two budget resolutions and facilitated transportation on the reconciliation bills one related to healthcare and one resulted in the tax reform legislation. this legislative activity in addition to all the other proposals considered considered but intense demands on cbo. in 2017 they produced more than 700 formal cost estimates, several thousand in the formal nearly 130 appropriation tabulations that's a lot of work for an agency about one tenth the size of 1 the office while i am appreciative of all of the hard work i also believe we must take the time to review these efforts we need to look back at what went right and also what may have gone wrong.

the budget act lays out the mission in section 202 where we can read and it shall be the primary duty and function to provide to the committee's on both houses information that will assist the committees and the discharge ofll all matters n their jurisdiction. this section refers to the cbo role in assisting and supporting the committees and members of the execution of their duties. testifying before us today is the cbo director with all of the divisions that are tasked with producingei statutorily required forecasts, thousands of cost estimates and proposed legislation and special reports as requested by congress. cbo budget analysis is an integral part of the process. when you last appeared before

the committee in september, 2016 to discuss operations and gave an update on the agency's progress towards several important goals in support of recent legislative initiatives to increase the transparency of the agency analysis and operations and the responsiveness to congressional needs. i'm interested in learning how the views regarding modeling transparency and ways the agency can more clearly communicate the methods, assumptionsy and data that underlined the budget analysis. i also welcome your thoughts on how we can more efficiently allocate the existing resources including staff responsibilities to satisfy these congressional requests and expectations. in 2018 and beyond we continue to play a key role in supporting congress as we consider the

budget and economic effects of the proposed legislation, its objectivity, transparency and the timeliness is essential to help congress make informed decisions. just as the role of the federal budget process crucial so too with the statutory responsibility to oversee cbo. i would like to have thank you for joining us today. senator sanders. >> i think before we do oversight it might be a good idea to do oversight of this committee. itit might be a good idea for te budget committeea to actually produce a budget and i know that is a radical idea that maybe that is what we want to do 116 days into the fiscal year to do something more than give a short term budget resolution.

the truth is has any business person in america will tell you, you can't run any kind of entity on a month-to-month basis. we are a 4 trillion-dollar entity that is what the united states government is. there are some agencies clearly that needs more funding and some that need less funding and the idea that we are saying every agency every month is going to get the same amount as they previously thought. we will find we are wasting tens and tens of billions of dollars of funding agencies that are clearly inefficient so we are not addressing that.

mr. chairman, it says to me that we have got to address the role in pushing our colleagues forward on this thing and we have got to address the budget crisis that we have. some of the issues we are all familiar with that have got to be addressed as we desperately try to come up with the 2018 annual budget. i think history will look back at this particular moment and see an incredible moral stain

about doing this to these younger people. another is a great desire to see more defense than we can argue about that but the bottom line is for every dollar that we spend on defense, we've got to spend on the needs of working families. three or four years of age are being impacted by the opioid crisis. kids are being taken out of their homes. have a crisis. we are not dealing with a crisis. unbelievably, unbelievably

mr. chairman. wele have not reauthorized the committee .-full-stop and, we have 30,000 vacancies at the veterans administration. 10,000 people with disabilities died last year while they were submitting claims to the social security administration doesn't have the staff or the funding to process both. are we going to adequately fund

the administration a pass another continuing resolution leaving them mostly underfunded. there are enormous needs facing the american people and they are not just getting tax breaks to fillonaires are trying to 30 million people. there's a number of notations and we will have more hearings

during this year. there are committees interested in pursuing in some depth as kind of a task force for oversight. since this time he has appeared before the committee to discuss the cbo's work and projections for the nation's fiscal situation. it's with george mason university, the bureau of labor statistics with the white house council of economic advisers with the department of commerce and international economists for the itc. the assistantnt professor at the

university of arkansas and department of treasury and worked with a wide variety of topics including labor market analysis and policy conditions and measurements and macroeconomic analysis. equilibrium and modeling which i hope you won't explain this morning. the masters of economics from purdue university and this morning doctor hall will be working over the last year. director hall will take up seven minutes followed by questions. welcome and please begin. thank you for inviting me here to discuss the work of the congressional budget office. as you know the mission is providing them on purpose in

analysis to support the work of the committee and congress aseea whole. we are devoted to the commission and i appreciate the opportunity to discuss how we plan to expand the work in the future. i want to take the opportunity to support your guidance we've long relied on the committee to explain to others in the congress with the role is to provide constructive feedback and how we can serve congress to provide guidance and with the congress priorities are. that has been the key to the success over the years and in the past year we've provided congress with 740 cost estimates and mandatess statements and we've also provided thousands of hours of technical assistance to the committees which have included thousands of informal cost estimates probably more work than the formal cost

estimates. 128 scorekeeping tabulations and analytical reports and working papers, dozenss of files in budget and economicec projectios and numerous other publications. many of the cost estimates were produced under very tight time constraints requiring extraordinary efforts by the staff to meet legislative deadlines. we also undertake new initiatives to enhance the responsiveness and transparency and we reorganized ther work process in the high demand and we publish more and projections about the economy, spending and health insurance subsidies.

in the cost estimates for many proposals including legislation reported by the committees. other major parks would include a volume of policy options that would reduce the budget deficit, reports in the long-term budget outlook, and i was as if the budget proposals and in the policy analyses on a broad range of topics and interest congressional committees. we are reviewing and updating every aspect of its simulation model of health insurance coverage which forms the backbone of the budget projections related to the federal health-care spending for people younger than 65 and in addition further developing the capabilities to process the economic effects of the fiscal policies and in the way that changes federal regulations agencies based one projections.

for the searc the searches and d the particular issues. i like to think of this as documenting the process models. the ways in which a proposal might assess which of them would substantiale effects. the models are just a few of the tools we use in producing the

estimates. within the range of the senate and house appropriations committees have recommended. if we receive the funding available in the resolution currently in effectai this yeare will make less progress. moreover, the ability to buy the data and research for other activities would be severely limited under the funding specified in the continuing resolution agencies perform the mission. they could be undertaken only if the cbo had more employees.

without review tv reducing the current staffing level. it's also to expand the capability by allowing new health-care analysts. i'm happy to meet with members of the congress with a chat on the phone and in addition we meet frequently with staff to explain the analysis and answer questions individually and in groups. we have plans to be in better contact. for instance earlier this month in collaboration with the research service they gave presentations to 150 congressional staff members about how they develop estimates of health insurance costs and coverage. i welcome your suggestions. >> now we will turn to questions let me take a moment to explain the process each member will

have five minutes and then senator sanders following the two of us we will alternate questions between the republicans and minority. all members in attendance when the hearing started will be recognized in order of seniority on their side. for those that arrived after the hearing began you are on the list and it's your turn to be on the list to be recognized you move to the bottom of the list and turned to the next senator to ask questions. with that, i have a few questions. a recent legislative proposal introduced in the house and senate would require them to publicly disclose the data you mentioned that in your testimony the intent of the legislation is to increase transparency and allow for outside analysts to reproduce and replicate cbo projectionsoj while you've made significant strides to open up the work toif the public but efforts are currently underway to increase the transparency

further for the congress and the public. transparencyted to and we've certainly been trying to increase transparency. there's different ways of being transparent with different benefits to congress and the different costs with respect toh benefits who would direct transparency to the members or staff. and then of course cost. there can be became time and resources used to become more

transparent. one of the things we are doing for example is a complete rewrite of the main model for doing healthcare insurance estimate. the rewrite will happen over the next year, but to give you the idea, we have plans since i've been on board to completely redo this model so it's been three years. we would have been finished by now it's over the past year we hadn't gotten so many healthcare related requests for the same people updating the model for wh the same doing cost estimates.

>> that is my next question is one complaint i often hear from colleagues as they are unable to receive estimates on the legislation in a timely manner but cbo has plenty of time to release other products and reports. how would you respond to that complaint are they the result of congressional requests or agency initiated, can you provide a list of reports that did not originate due to the specific request are not directly attributed to a single requesting office? >> you first expressed concern about that. wewe haven't started the report since i've been a director having specific congressional interest from a committee with jurisdiction so we simply don't do the analytical reports just on our own. we square that away first.

we have time for other people working on the reports. they all interfere with work on cost estimate estimates for exai work on the developing models for cost estimates into that sortg of thing. how do you prioritize those requests? >> we get way more work than we can possibly handle so what we do is look to the committees of jurisdiction and ask them what are their priorities and we follow their priorities. one of the more frustrating to do when i have get calls from members sometimes have a piece of legislation they would like to look at if we are really busy with committee work we have to ask can we make this a priority and often times the answer is no.

we are trying to take direction from committees on how to protect resources. >> there's a chairman of the budget committee to have more of a role in that. my time has expired so i will turn over to senator sanders. >> as we contemplate passing a budget. one is equal funding for defense and if i am correct the next three budgets that would pass so had.

he is a cornerstone is that correct? by republican colleagues have spent a lot of time this year on healthcare and if my recollection is correct, your agency has been criticized a bit for the analysis that they provided us on various health care proposals. so let's go over this again because i think the consensus is that you are right and urinalysis. there should be a truth in advertising. cbo found that 32 million fewer

people after ten years. it's also relative to the baseline. may 24, they scored the american health care act as passed by the house. 23 million fewer people with health insurance after ten years does that sound about right? they made the obvious conclusion that when you substantially cut federal funding on healthcare low and behold i think you came up with the obvious congress

version you were criticized and i think that iss unfortunate. after trying to throw tens of millions of health insurance by republican colleagues took a look at taxes in the united states. the legislation that was finally passed would add more than $1.7 trillion to the deficit when interest costs are includ included. am i correct in saying the analysis determined that the legislation is that a fair

representation? they after day and month after month. november 8, cbo estimated the effects of repealing the affordable care act or so-called individual mandate so they estimated the change would increase the numbervi of peopley 13 million within ten years and increase premiums by about 10% in any given year.

it would actually save the government $6 million. does that sound about right? >> yes it does. let me just conclude by saying i think under a lot of pressure your agency is trying to do the objective work that is expected of you and i hope they would refrain from attacking the agency because the results that you produce are not some comfortable. >> thank you mr. chairman. doctor hall, i want to get to the line of questions the chair and waswa engaged in in terms of who decides which you score. the reason i'm asking the questions after the election knowing we are going to be bringing up health care, i did testing scores on what would

have been if we repealed market reforms. didn't get very far so on march 23, 2017 i sent a letter to you sent by the chairman and 20 of my other colleagues requesting the congressional budget office in consultation with the taxation estimate the budgetary effect of repealing the obamacare insurance regulation. understand what policy might cause. why didn't we ever get that score. this is four months before this came to head. the only response we got this i can't do it. now you do all kinds of different things, all kinds of investments.

it's simple why didn't we get an answer 22 republican senators asked for this analysis what would it cost the government if we repealed those market reforms? >> i can tell you it was working flat out for months. one of things i did is this underrated to make a point about it we are getting draft legislation's from the jurisdiction that will wind up being real legislation. >> i will follow this in private with you and find out why we didn't get this. i want to move on to the question of t insurance coverag. by law, you have to do that. but it's also true that in

january, 2017 you created another baseline in terms of insurance coverage. now, in your score for the healthcare debate that'health cy much poisoned the well use it in 201,850,000,000 would lose health insurance because the senate bill. that's broken down 7 million of the individual market for medicaid. it's against the march baseline if you compare to the most recent baseline in january, the individual market there would have been no additional uninsured. we would have been left with 8 million dropping medicaid coverage. now i can understand with the mandate while people might lose employer coverage. why would people drop the medicaid. fast forward to 2026.

7 million of that should just be excluded because of estimate it would be nobody losing coverage on the individual market based on january 2017 baseline so that leaves 15 million people, 22 minus 170 losing medicaid. now again you can say people are going to drop the free coverage because there is an individual mandatisn't individualmandate ae whatsoever to me. it makes no sense.e so, i had a conversation one of the most frustrating but i've ever had with marc hadley. i asked for the cbo in their latest replacement and legislation to break out of medicaid expansion versus and he did that and i appreciate that. it certainly helped my analysis but i also asked a very simple thing. you compared your coverage estimates with your march 2016 baseline but because you also have a new baseline, why didn't

you just put that as an alternate scenario? response like that would take two weeks. you've got the baseline right here showing 19 million people uninsured on the individual under the senate bill, 19 minus 19 is zero. i could do that in seconds. whyd did you refuse to provide the american people the information that would have been freaking them out where we could use the analysis. 8 million losing on the market for medicaid really probably looking out for. the ultimate scenario would have had the different numbers that suggest because they are changing the baseline and had differenhavedifferent effects be premiums for higher at the same

time the coverage was lower. let's go to the growth of medicaid. most of that is not the con of medicaid,an but defended the expansion of medicaid, so those were people who primarily don't have medicaid and won't get it over the next ten years and would have under current law at the time. so we are not talking about people dropping from medicaid. >> this is a simple math you can come up with an estimate or baseline but you're not providing the american people the information youne need. there will be an opportunity at the end for the shuttle questions. next the senator van hollen.

one of the things i was going to ask you about is continuing work of the congressional budget office that we heard from the pentagon spokesperson a few weeks ago. we've now had four results that has negative consequences for the defense. does goinges from cr cr meet yor work harder and what are the consequences of it? >> it does make things harder. we've actually put off some things that we have like computer things. we will have to curtail and move down a few spots and cancel some training and travel survey does have a consequence for us. >> in terms of the planning doesn't make the planning harder

or lead to some inefficiencies in the ability to win we need to hire? >> yes it does. >> the good news is that congress reauthorized the program for six years and as it was referenced the congressional budget office estimated that it is actually saved money and i think you said $6 billion compared to the earlier baseline is that right? your analystsng of savings wasnt a result of the cost of providing healthcare services to these children going down, was it? it was the cost of the alternative going up. the alternative is the health care provided in the affordable care act exchanges primarily, is that right? the reason, the primary reason

those costs went up is a result ofsu the fact the elimination of the individual mandate resulted according to cbo the cost of premiums going up. so, i think that this is an important point for people to understand that the reason the cost of providing services went down is because those children if they were denied the alternative in the children's health insurance program would have gone into the affordable care act exchanges, and as a result of the individual mandate removal being the primary cause of the cost to the taxpayer would go up because when those premiums go up, we all pay a higher tax credit to help meet the needs of those individuals

is that correct? so, that is my--it just shows when you do one thing to pull the rug out of the affordable carefo act, you increase the premiums by 10% so if you don't ensure the program, the kids coming into the affordable care act exchanges would have had higher premiums and as a result taxta credit with make sure that they are affordable and would haveve gone up. so yes it is great if we extended the children's health insurance program and saved $6 billion the proceedings was relative to baseline at the thee baseline cost went up in the individual mandate. i hope that members will understand the consequences for theirct actions with respect to

actually saving taxpayers money and providing an important benefith. street sometimes we disagree with the analysis but if we didn't have some kind of a referee in the united states congress we would have even more of a free-for-all than we currently have and we already have a hell of a free-for-all, so i'm grateful for somebody being able to take an objective look at this and providing an analysis that we can use. i'm grateful that you provide a baseline for what is fact with regards to the budget. >> i want to talk about partisanship.

i found three things this morning in a bipartisan way that i agree with the ranking member today and i want to put that in the record. i agree this is the first opening comment about the need to be serious about the budget process and recognize that it's broken. the second thing is we all want to find a way to solve the issue and we need to find a way to simplify the titles of the bills around here but i also want to agree with my colleague, senator van hollen. you are attempting to be an objective source for modeling and participation and objecting the impact of the potential legislation, but i want to talk about how to achieve that. this is one of the most partisan committees that i have seen on thee judiciary that this is a very partisan committee and unnecessarily some. but it is partisan because of the budget process. members on the other side of the

committee, several members, senator white house, senator cain and the members on this site i think we all agree that process is broken. it is a resolution and therefore the majority crams down the throat of the minority there political statement about what they think they should do on spending and you get caught in the middle. middle. when site likes your opinion, the other side doesn't. this will change and at some point in the future what they will be in the majority, this is a broken process we have to fix that in thbut in the meantime, n important role and i think it is critical you being as nonpartisan as youpl can be, i agree with the chairmen and ranking member that they should be involved in thehe prioritiesf what you're allocating time and resources to. you heard important questions being asked in the healthcare and tax debate that didn't get answered.

how do you do respond to that and then i want to talk t about how youho are assuring that we maintain a nonpartisan position. what you addressed that veryth quickly?y? >> one of the m things for us if we do so much technical assistance that leads to a cost estimate, but we are looking at legislation, giving feedback and informal estimates. that is so often done by a committee for leadership and they want it done confidential confidentially. ..

>> the actual enrollment was 11 million, 12,000,010,000,000 when you see that error it raises questions in my mind about impartiality particularly when the author of those estimates and then as

head of the 1993 task force. how do we assure ourselves we have a nonpartisan objective viewpoint and to seek advice and guidance on both sides. and to look at how they a did. and how the estimates turned out there. but in defense it is hard to estimate thesese things.he and with these exchanges. and with the spendings and other things but we are more accurate than most others. but it goes to the issue of

bias. we could be off or wrong but fully we are not consistently wrong. we are overly estimating the exchange participation we tried to fix it with a background in economic data you don't want to have revisions all one way to go up and down. that is would like to have. we try to do it that way. we try to be transparent. >> let me echo to see the budget committee 100% partisan and 0% meaningful. the most important work isn't even budget work but a

political task of the procedural gateway to another partisan political -- political effort down the road short of that we don't need doctor hall or anything because we don't do anything in this committee. there is ayt reason over and over again we have committee hearings on the budget of the united states and nobody bothers to show up in the audience because they know perfectly well there is zero effect. once the appropriators got accustomed to beat on the appropriation bill the penalty for breaking the budgetha to get 60 votes renders us useless.

only looking at appropriated funds not that goes out the back door of the tax code or the healthcare expenditures of the country just contributes we made ourselves the useless committee i would like to correct on a bipartisan basis. but the healthcare cost issue this is one of my least favorite graphs life expectancy in years of the developed countries and cost per capita basically all major competitors we are way the heck out here.

we cost a fortune more per capita than any other industrialized country and life expectancy compared to chile in the czech republic. so you guys do some really good work into me this is one of the more interesting things i have seen. redline on the top is the projection made back here. august 2010 and january 2017 that is lower than this green blockd. if we could pass

something in the senate and the house together mom -- to give us savings we don't know exactly why that happened. with that transparency. if you look at the possibility of trillions of dollars of future healthcare savings to figure out and explain what could die i'll bad up a little bit? why not 6.6 trillion?

i hope if we spend more money on staff this is important priority. >> so provider accountable care organizations those that agreed to sign up to place a bet they can give better care lower cost and inca return they don't get paid for procedures or prescriptions that bonus for for doing a good job. some of the best are in rhode island and they see their cost per patient go down year-over-year and they are generating millions of dollars of savings just enough local practice.

in these local experiences that we areen all seeing how to maximize that is a job worth doingin in a committee that appears to have no purpose. >> that goes right into our analytical reports and this is the thing. >> to say we do 13 bearing hearings the numberdi of things and so we didn't know who the president or the majority would be. and not to have enough people involved in that process.in

>> i am planning on doing some hearings on a task force led by individuals on this committee and i suspect you have the intense interest in healthcare. >> it has become very partisan. and as congress as a whole for the response with that analysis but i wonder thosere losses have 5 million person

lost under medicaid. and that assumed that some number of those 18 on expansion states that if the bill had passed those states would decide to drop medicaid.ed and you could even get to 5 million day don't make that kind of prediction i find that pretty astonishing. it is more a political judgment in an economic assessment and there is no good explanation for why we

reach that conclusion and to be fairly consistent with the reports which are usually pretty good when it comes to government revenues but political judgments or of private individuals and rarely to be made adequate and public and to understand the counter projections mentally stop there. >> that is key to the proposal that how many states will choose to expand or not. if we choose no more that

affects the numbers if we said some will expand, we try our best to look at past history to put states into different buckets. we did put this page and there but we didn't want to talk about particular states then. >> i don't want to get into the details of that in particular but that was a very small universe of data of 18 data points not millions that you optimally use. and that was not explicit in the analyst explained that to us in detail. why not just make that public?

with a different scenario analysis. >> we are happy to try to start doing more than that my only defenses we only have so many people or so much time that it is a trade-off but if you want more time spent on transparency. >> with complete healthcare we have 40 people. those that really engages less than 20 on all estimates. 230 total and 40 on healthcare a lot of other buckets we have to cover. we are not huge but some are working full out. >> the summer of 2013 there was an immigration debate at

the time cbo produced an estimate it was controversial on all quarters about future immigrant flows and the impact on wages and population. i spoke with your predecessor after some time that i want to get into the details they said they don't have the resources i will come to you and they said it isn't a finished product and i said two years ago i was modeling complex problems economically at a business and i was refused. is that an appropriate response to a member of congress? >> no. we would like to do better. >> if i have a future question of a similar analysis i am welcome to come sit at somebody's desk to look at

modeling? >> absolutely i never refused to talk to a member. >> thank you. >> senator kennedy. >> doctor hall thank you for coming today. and to be a neutral arbiter and working under a lot of pressure you and all your people are very bright that much is clear to herself you are also serving the american people. i will make a couple of suggestions about what we need and what the american people need.

number one you've got to move more quickly. i know that is easy for me to say but for a variety of reasons i think the pace is quickened when we get in the middle of discussing an issue.us number two, you've got to be clearer. it doesn't dosn any good. i don't want to overstate this that is why i am prefacing what i am saying with how extraordinary is the work that you do. but the analysis has to be thorough but written in non- swahili so the american people and the press can pick it up

to say okay, here are the conclusions, why cbo reach that conclusion and here are the assumptions they are makingcl understanding and predicting the future you have to make certain assumptions. you can accompany that with a long detailed phd dissertation documents i can assure you more members of congress give credit for will read but it seems to me that if we get it quickly, the american people have an opportunity to understand that. not because the american people are stupid, they're not.

most americans don't read aristotle every day but they are too busy earning a living but they will figure it out. i'm just adjusting we can all do a better job to help them do that.m that is my only comment it is easy to criticize and monday morning quarterback and you work under pressureor but i think the american people given your well-deserved reputation, deserve more clarity i say that gently and with the spirit of gratitude. >> i thank you have identified the two biggest problems that we have is that responsiveness and transparency and sometimes they collide. so we have been working hard

thinking of ways to improve that process it is also why we are asking for more resources but i appreciate the feedback. >> thank you for being here today. >> we appreciate any more ideas that you have. >> thank you dr. hall for being here you work awfully hard and our job is to help you get the job done. one thing is you are in the central position we can't do things without you.

but how much not getting information affects congress to do its job. that is a huge deal. i know you have problems with resources but we need to measure things the way in on bunches of stuff and that is accurate sometimes it's not and because of the fact there is a mistake be made. i think it would be helpful that we can truly rely on the information versus i guess that is only through metrics you have to have that ability to check yourselves out. can you talk about that?

if you don't have the resources and what would it take? you need to have an information. >> one of the things we do every year is the analysis of actuals looking at all the budget categories how did we do? how close are we? how do we adjust our view going forward? that maybe we will start publishing in the analysis you see how we did in these categories of course the tricky part is the budget categories are largerie than pieces of legislation but it

will give you an idea if we are more or less accurate. >> and at times we run into disagreements that there is areas i think the committee staff truly are experts in particular areas has significant disagreements and i would hope there is dialogue to work out the differences to change perspective for what is going o on. >> so if we get pieces of legislation looking at data or analysis we ask for that. we want to be sure that the committee feels like we have given them a fair look think that is an important starting

point. >> one of the things you talked about last time was problems of retaining qualified people. and also you said more than 60% has made offers to stay in academic position it sounds like it is a huge problem to acknowledge so what do we do to help you get the people that you need and retain people? >> one of the things that has changed is we were capped so

all salaries had to be basically below my salary. a lot of people competing for senior managers in the executive branch have a higher pay scale. much asld make as 30,000 dollars more so now going forward we can pay senior managers as much as the executive scale. not that we will be back that we now have the flexibility that will be important to retain the top people. that was a good move we are trying to be careful how we use it. >> retaining and recruiting. >> we appreciate the input from members we have a lot of notes that we as well as bod to do to improve the process

but in your opening comment that stuff with me that it has been talked a little bit but not directly is have you considered serving as the aggregator collecting estimate from the outside think tanks to put that as part of transparency as well as your answer? is that a potential solution? >> we are happy to do what we are asked but with cbo you get consistent quality. high quality work and work very hard not to be biased but if we make models available part of the advantage of cbo isn't just the models that we run them. if you want to get input from the tanks that is a good idea to get their views we are happy to try to do that more

to see if that helps but whether they will spend a lot of time producing competing estimate for the small things probably isn't realistic but there is value to assure you that we talk to them and spend some time getting their views. >> i learned a lot today. i think there is general agreement we have a broken budget process i have watcheder this for years and shared it for a while i know most budgets never last more than 40 days before there is a waiver and as senator whitehouse pointed out it only takes the votes to overcome that which is usually the same amount that takes to pass legislation so that is 100% assured in one of the things we had from our hearing those

13 hearings while senator whitehouse was the acting ranking member was there ought to be a higher threshold for higher numbers. i think we should consider that if where is any possibility of making a difference will continue to hold hearings and we will review that but i did hear that this is the most partisan committee i want them to know that it has been since it was first initiated in 1974. processes. the process is for the majority party to hold the so the other side can comment on the budget and i never

consider that to be fair so we change the process we now give five days in advance and it helps to ask that i the markup and the hearing so now in exchange everybody has to turn in their amendment and what i learned working with senator kennedy was that when those amendments come in early, a seed of possibility and every one of those and more often looking at the same seeds planted on both sides of the aisle if they can come up with a common one thatom will work. that is what i hope comes out of the budget process to make it less partisan and then reconciliation becomes the most important part because

every amendment has to have a budgetary impact of some significant so the rules that follow that make actual legislation very difficult. if that is the only way to movet forward it is the method of choice in both eyes have used it. there are better ways to legislate. that one of the key messages talking about transparency not many people will follow that model and those that are even tougher to explain verbally but those assumptions are they have a good ability to understand that could make

that transparency we talk about for those non- economist and almost everybody and also the idea everything should be written in non- swahili and for those that are not as biasin and on how good they sound i appreciate your comment allowing people to sit down to get a better understanding particularly for people that

is helpful. thank you for being here today and we will continue to work with you to do more oversight work not that we were legislate bypass information on to jurisdiction. with that hearing is concluded. people can turn in their list of questions and we will get a response. thank you. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

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