are waiting for democrat members of the committee to arrive.

>> waiting for democrat members of the senate budget comttee to arre here for this oversight hearing for the congressional budget office. it appears they are arriving now. we should get underway in a moment. >> hopefully this will be a really critical hearing and i think it has the potential to give us a lot of really good information. good morning, welcome to the oversight hearing at the congressional budget office. i'm proud to say this is the third such installment of this committee's continued oversight of cbo under my chairmanship. i'm glad the house budget

committee will hold additional meetings. the active 74 provides the budget committee to review continuing basis by the congressional budget office of the functions and duties. the present of the committee with the opportunity to review as a performance and serve forum to discuss the way in which cbo could be more effective and intending to the needs of congress. they should also work in clarifying the office while improving its operations. alice reveling, the first director of cbo instructed staff oura memo when she said " work and publication must alys be balanced, thoroughnd free of any partisan damage. " more than 40 years later, the public still depends on the cbo to provide objective, accurate transparent and timely budgetary

and economic analysis. one of the difficulties with the office is that they have to forecast and that is especially difficult when it is about the future. we do want to have the best possible answers, we always want them phrased in our own way. i have been exploring the request for more transparency, for getting to see the models. i think we are mostly asking for the main assumptions used to reach your 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 this year. in 2016 we 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 minority five days before the budget markup, with amendments submitted early so

that side by sides could be developed and better yet, ones that came from both sides of the aisle with similar amendments could get together for even better solutions. i still have a lot of hope for that and anticipate doing that again. last year was a busy time for the senate budget committee, we at proved two budget resolutions and does go reconciliation bills. one resulting in health care and one in the tax reform legislation. this legislative activity in addition to all the other proposals considered by our authorized and appropriation committees for death were intense demands on cbo. in 2017, cbo produced more than 700 formal cost estimates, several thousand in formal cost estimates, nearly 130 appropriations tabulations and 86 analytical reports and working papers. that is a lot of work for an

agency that is 1/10 the size of the government accountability office. while i am appreciative of all the cbo hard work, i believe we must take the time to review these efforts, we need to look back at one went right, but also what may have gone wrong. it is crucial that cbo keep its mission firmly in mind. the budget act lays out that mission in section 202 were we can read it shall be the primary function of the office to provide to the committees on the budgets of both houses information which will assist such committees in the discharge of all matters within their jurisdiction. this important section refers to c'in aisting and supporting the committee membe in the execution of their duties. and it is always hobbled to remember that cbo exists for this purpose. before sunday's cbo director keith hall. he oversees all eight cbo producing test with

budget and economic forecasts, thousands cost estimates and propose legislation and special reports as requested by congress. cbo's budget analysis is meant for party let's let process. when you last appeared before this committee in september 2016 to discuss cbo operations, you gave us an update on the agency progress for several important goals. in addition to cbo's work in support of recent legislation, we also remain interested in those goals, increase transparency of agency analysis and your agency's responsiveness to congressional needs. i'm specifically interested in learning how cbo's views regarding modeling transparency and ways the agency can more clearly communicate the method, some sins and data that underlie budget analysis. look for your thoughts on how cbo can more efficiently allocate existing

, including staff responsibilities to satisfy these congressional requests and expectations. , cbo willd beyond continue to play a key role in supporting congress as we consider the budget economic its objectivity, accuracy,on transparency and timeliness is essential to help congress make informed decisions. just as cbo's role in the federal process is crucial, so to this committee statutory responsibility to overseeing cbo. i would like to thank dr. hall for joining us today and a look for to the discussion. san. sanders: thank you mr. chairman, dr. hall for being here. before we do oversight on the cbo, it might be a good idea to do oversight on this committee. it might be a good idea for the budget committee to actually produce a budget, i know that is a radical idea, but maybe that

is what we want to do in my be a good idea for the republican leadership 116 days and to the fiscal year to actually do something more than short-term budget resolution. is as any bid -- business person in america will tell you, you cannot run any kind of -- on a month-to-month basis. entity, $4 trillion that is what the united states government is, there are some agencies clearly the need more funding, there are some agencies that need less funding. the idea we are saying that every agency of government every month will get exactly the same amount of money that they previously got because of a continuing resolution is insane. i suspect if anyone looked at it, you would find tens and tens of billions of dollars. to death or funding agencies

that are clearly inefficient. we are not addressing that, we keep kicking the can down the road. that is the most important thing we have got going. dr. hall -- dr. hall doing his job. it is our responsibility for -- so mr. chairman, it seems to me that we have got to address and maybe this committee can play a more active role in pushing our colleagues forward on this thing. we have got to address the budget crisis that we have. we just address some of the issues which i think we are familiar with that have got to be address as we desperately try to come up with a 2018 annual budget. we have the moral issue. people in thisg country raised in this country who only know the united states

as their home are on the verge of facing deportation. let me be clear about this, if we do not addre this issue, i think historwill look back at this particular moment and see -- aboutible moral doing this to these young people. but we have also got to do is create a budget which provides --. i know there's largely to see more defense and we can argue about that. for every dollar we spend on defense, we have got to spend on the need for working families. five minutes ago i came from my office where i talked to parents and administrators at the headstrong program in vermont and they are telling me as i'm sure they are telling you in your offices that children all over the country, little kids

are being impacted by the of euro crisis. kids are being taken out of their homes because their parents are addicted and put into force homes. with a crisis, we are not dealing with a crisis. unbelievably mr. chairman, we have 27 million people in this country who utilize community health systems to get the health care, dental care, the low-cost prescription costs, the mental health counseling they need. 27 million people, one out of four people in my own state, we have not reauthorized the community health program. we have 30,000 vacancies at the veterans administration, so instead of giving speechbout how much we love veterans, why don't we make sure the v.a. is adequately funded. some of you may have seen a piece in the washington post last month, unbelievable, 10,000 people with disabilities died last year.

while they were submitting claims to the social security administration that does not have the staff or funding to process those claims. 10,000 americans with disabilities died from in adequately funding -- died. will we fund the social security ministration or spend another continuing resolution? i am sure there are communities that do not have adequate broadband. how do you bring businesses into those communities? how do kids do their homework if there is not adequate broadband? there are enormous needs facing the american people and those neither not just giving tax break to billionaires or trying to throw 30 million people off of health care. there are needs we have to address. we chairman, i would hope have a serious debate about the budget of the united states of america and we do it as soon as

we can. dr. hall, thank you for being with us. sen. enzi: thank you sen. sanders: i appreciate your marks and i've made a number of notations. we will have more hearings during this year and i would be interested in what different members of the committee would be interested in, particularly pursuing some depth as kind of a task force for oversight for us so that we can do a better job of budgeting. dr.witness this morning is keith hall, the ninth director of the congressional budget office. he is no stranger to the committee having served as cbo director since april of 2015, he has before -- appeared before this committee to discuss cbo's work and discussed be situation. he worked with the international

trade commission, george mason university, bureau of labor statistics, the white house council of economic advisers, with the department of commerce and internationally for the itc. he is also an assistant professor at the university of arkansas and an international economist of the apartment of treasury and recently worked with a wriety of topics including labor market analysis and policy, economic conditions and measurement, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting economic policy and partial equilibrium modeling. which i hope you won't explain this morning. [laughter] sen. enzi: he has a phd and a masters in economics from purdue university. dr. hall will be talking with us about cbo's work over the last year and the goals he has set out for these -- this important agency. we look forward to your testimony. take a fewll will

minutes for his opening statement, welcome dr. hall, please begin. chairman enzi, ranking member sanders and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me. cbo's mission is providing nonpartisan budgetary economic analysis to support the work of this community and the congress as a whole. i appreciate the opportunity to discuss cbo has executed this year and how we plan to expand our work in the future. also want to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and guidance. we had -- we at cbr long relied on budget committee to expunge what our role is, to provide constructive's feedback on how we can serve congress and what legislative -- are occurring in what the priorities are. that work on your part has been ke for years. in the past few years -- year we have provided congress with 740

formal cost estimates and mandate statements. we have also provided thousands of hours of technical insistence to committees which have included thousands of informal cost estimates, more than a formal cost estimates. 128 tabulations, 86 analytical reports and working papers, dozens of files , budget andrlined economic projections and numerous other publications. many cost estimates were produced under tight time constraints and required extraordinary effort by our staff to hit deadlines. also except new initiatives to enhance our responsiveness and transparency. we reorganize work processes and shifted resources to areas of high demand. we published more evaluations of our projections about the economy, spending and health insurance subsidies. we documented more for analytical methods on insurance,

pension benefit guarantees and health care for the military for example. examples of changes in her estimates addressing issues from social security to options for changing medicare. in the next two years, cbo plans continue to support the budget committees and the congress by producing an economic base fine projection, reports about this projections and cost estimates for any proposal including all legislation like committees. other does others will include a valuation of policy options would reduce budget deficits, reports on the long-term budget outlook, analysis of the proposals, monthly reviews, policy analyses on a broad range of topics of interest. cbo is updating every area of its model of coverage.

in addition, cbo will firmly develop its capabilities to assess macroeconomic effects on policies and the way changes in federal regulations affect the baseline projections. responsiveness and transparency are top priorities of mine and we have to bolster them further. we will make greater use of team approaches to handle surges and demand. we will increase public documentation of our computer toels, we will also do more explain how analysts employ those tools as part of the process for producing estimates. i likeo ink of this is documented in our process. -- documen our process. an analyst identified as the ways in which a proposal might affect the budget and access is which of them would have substantial effect. the analyst also consults experts and examines the most relevant data research for a basis for the estimate which includes determining which models to use, if any, what information you put into these

models and how to use their output in combination with other available information. in short, cbo models do not produce estimates, cbo does. the models are just a few of the tools we use to reduce our estimates. we make -- we will be up to make significant process in our plans if west transparency receive funding for fiscal year 2018 within the range that the senate and house appropriations committee have recommended. if we receive the funding available under the continuing resolution in effect this year, we will make less progress. cbo's ability to buy and pay for research would be severely limited under the money specified in the continuing resolution. initiatives of great interest in congress could only be taken if current cbo had more , we submitted a budget request to hire a new staff

members and 2019 to bolster our responsiveness and transparency as part of a plan to hire 20 additioneople by 2021. the new staff would help cbo respond to information more quickly when there is a surge in demand. they also require more information about analysis models without reducing the valuable services it provides to congress. the next two years, cbo proposed analytical capability by adding new health-care analysts and creating additional on-site capacity for sensitive data can -- securely. i'm delighted to talk about our work today and anytime in the future as well. i'm happy to meet with members of congress to chat on the phone. frequentlyes meet with congressional staff to explain analysis and answer questions individually and in groups. for instance earlier this month, inc. corroboration with the service, my colleagues gave presentation to one and 50

congressional staff members about how cbo estimates about health cost and coverage. thank you director hall and now we turn to questions. let me it's going the process. each member will have fought -- let me explain the process. each member will have five -- startingowing with myself and sen. sanders. for those whorriveder the hearing began, you are on the list in order ofivif you are noe will move on the list and i turn 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 cbo to publicly disclose its models and data. you mentioned that in your testimony, the intent of this

legislation is to increase transparency and allow for outside analysts to reproduce and replicate cbo projections. while you have made significant strides to open up cbo's work to the public, what efforts are currently underway at cbo to increase transparency further for both the congress and the public? you think disclosing models would improve the legislative process and public confidence in the final product? how would that vary from sharing more assumptions used? dr. hall: we are committed to transparency. we certainly have been trying numerous forms of transparency. one of the things we're try to ,o is try to this intelligently treat our decisions on transparency as good business decisions for us. there are lots of way being ways ofent, different being transparent have different benefits to congress and different costs. , who we to benefits

direct the transparency too, are we being more transferred to expertsor staff or two who can evaluate what we are doing. then of course cost. there can be significant time and resources used to become more transparent so we have to make this benefit cost trade-off analysis. part of what we are doing is we have some ideas on being more transparent, we are calling them pilots because we want to try them and see how that is received by congress. a lot of things we're doing for example is we are doing a mainete rewrite of our models for health care insurance estimates. that rewrite will happen over the next year, but to give you an idea, we have plans to

completely redo this model and so it has been three years. we would have been finished by now if over the past year we hadn't gotten so many health care related requests, so the same people who would be updating the model were busy doing cost estimates. >> that fits in with my next question which is one complaint i hear from colleagues is that they are unable to receive estimates on legislation in a timely manner. but cbo has plenty of time to release a number of other projects and reports. how would you respond to that complaint? are these results of congressional request or the agency initiated? list ofprovided a published reports that did not originate due to a specific congressional reque a sine requesting office? askingl: thank you for that. when i first came on board you expressed concern about that. started a single analytical report since i've been a director without having specific congressional

congressionally -- committee express interest with jurisdiction. we simply do not do reports on our own. we square that away first. we have a lot of different areas of expertise, so when we are really busy on health care, we only have so many people we can pull into health care. so we have time for the wood work on other reports. we do our best to not let our analytical reports interfere with our work on cost estimates for example or developing model for cost estimates. sen. enzi: how do you prioritize those quest for reports? dr. hall: we looked at committees. we try not to prioritize things ourselves. ourselves. we get way more work than we possibly could handle, so we look to committees of jurisdiction and ask them what are their priorities, and we follow those. one of the more frustrating things that i have to do is i

get calls from members sometimes to have a piece of legislation they would like the cbo to look at. if we are really busy with committee work, we have to asked the committee, can we make this a priority and oftentimes the answer is no. i know that is frustrating, but we are trying to take direction from committees as to how to direct our resources. >> we will be looking into whether there is a role for the ranking member and the chairman of the budget committee to have more of a role in that ranking. my time has expired almost, so i will turn it over with senator sanders. hall, as we contemplate maybe someday passing a budget , refreshld you help me my rim -- memory.

my recollection is that in the budget control act of 2011, one of the cornerstones of that ill was parity -- bill was parity. if i'm correct, the next three budgets that were passed also had parity as a cornerstone. is i correct? >> that sounds right. >> dr. hall, my republican colleagues havspent a lot of time this year on health care, and if my recollection is collect -- correct, your agency has been criticized a bit for the analyses that they provided us on various health care proposals. so let's go over it again, because i think the consensus is that you were right in your analyses, but bottom line is 2017, cbonuary 17, scored the so-called restoring

americans health care reconciliation act -- we have got to do something about these titles. there should be a truth in advertising too. it was vetoed by president obama. the cbo found 32 million fewer people would have health insurance after 10 years, and that average premiums for the nongroup market would almost double by 2026, does that sound correct? >> it does. it is also relative to a baseline, and expected change in coverage. on may 24, cbo scored the american health care act as passed by the house. million fewer 23 people would have health insurance after 10 years. does that sound about right? >> yes, it does. >> so in other words, what cbo the obvious

conclusion that when you substantially cut federal funding on health care, low and behold people lose their health insurance. i want to ask you to comment on this. i think you came up with the obvious conclusion, but because you came up with that conclusion which was not terribly palatable to some of my colleagues, you are criticized -- were criticized and that is unfortunate. we should let these people do their jobs and come up with objective conclusions without attacking them because we do not like the conclusions they have. after trying to throw tens of millions of people off health insurance, my republican colleagues took a look at taxes in the united states. am i correct in saying that cbo's analysis said that the legislation that was finally passed would add more than $1.7 trillion to the deficit when interest costs are included? >> i would have to give credit

to our colleagues in the joint committee on taxation who did the actual hard work. >> i know that, but that sounds about right? >> yes >> and i correctn saying the jct's analysis-- would add to the deficit? >> that is correct. >> i will not ask you to comment on this, but i will comment. day after day, world after month -- month after month, i hear about the world collapsing after the national debt. dr. hall, on november 8, cbo re-estimated the effects of repealing the affordable care act so-called individual mandate. cbo estimated the change would increase the number of uninsured people are 13 million within 10

years, and increase premiums by about 10% in any given year. does that sound consistent with what you told us? >> it does. on january 11,y cbo estimated the cost of expanding the children's health ,nsurance program for 10 years you projected a 10 year extension would actually save the government $6 billion. does that sound 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 youand that i hope that some of my colleagues would refrain from attacking the agency because the results that you produce are not something they are comfortable with. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator johnson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. dr. hall, i want to go to kind -- line oftion

questioning the chairman was engaged in. in terms of who decides what you score, who do you report to? after the election, knowing that we are going to be bringing up health care i started formally requesting scores on what would happen if we repeal mark reforms. did not get very far, so one march 23, 2017 i sent a letter to you signed by the chairman and 20 of my colleagues, 22 republican senators requesting the congressional budget office in consultation -- estimate their budgetary effects of appealing the obamacare insurance regulations. you are aware of the reasons we need that. just understand what policies might cause, but there is no way we could bring it in front of the senate if we do not have a score to perp -- resent -- present the parliamentarian.

i want to know, why did we ever get that score? this is four months before this came to a head. the only response we got is, cannot do it. you do all kinds of different things, make all kinds of estimates so i will ask about the number of people losing insurance. why didn't we get an answer? 22 republican senators asked for this analysis, what would it cost the government if we repealed those reforms. our can tell you that health group was just working flat out for months. >> this was in march. >> even in march. one of the things that is underrated, we do a tremendous amount of what i call technical assistance where we are getting draft legislation from a , thattee or jurisdiction will ultimately wind up being real legislation. >> i will follow this in private for you -- with you.

i want to move on to the question of insurance coverage. usedscores under obamacare the march 2016 baseline, which by law you had to do that, but it is true that in january 2017 you created another baseline in terms of insurance coverage, correct? >> yes. >> this was thecbo through intoe debate that poison the well. he said in 2018, 15 million americans would lose health insurance because of the senate bill. that is broken down 7 million in the individual market, 4 million .edicaid, 4 million employer that is comparing against the march baseline. if you compared it to your most recent baseline, there had been no additional uninsured. we would've been left with 8 million, 4 million on medicaid

and 4 million on employer. i can understand on a mandate why people might lose coverage. why might people drop pre-medicaid? 15 million grew to 22 million, but 7 million should have been excluded because you updated your estimate that there would be nobody losing coverage on the individual market based on your january 2017 baseline. that leaves 15 million people. 22 minus 7, 15 million people all losing medicaid. you can say people are going to drop basically free coverage because there is not an individual mandate. it makes no sense whatsoever to me, no sense. so i had a conversation, mo the most frustrating i have ever had. -- one of the most frustrating i have ever had. i asked for the cbo for the

latest legislation to breakout medicaid expansion, and you did that, and that was helpful. i also asked a very simple thing. compare your coverage estimates with your march 2016 baseline, but because you also have a new baseline, why don't you put that as an alternate scenario? the response would take two weeks. you have the baseline chilling 19 million people uninsured on the individual, 19 million under the senate will. -- senate bill. 19 -19 is zero. why did you refuse to provide the american people the information that would not have been freaking them out, where we could have looked at this analysis and gone, 8 million people losing, 4 million medicaid. we are probably looking at four. why didn't you provide that

alternate scenario? >> it is not clear that the alternate scenario would have gotten the different numbers that you suggest, let me put it that way. they are changing the baseline -- they're changing the baline d two effects, because the emiumsere higher while the covera was lower. we talked about the 15 million drop in medicaid. that is really, most of that is not a decline in medicaid but the legislation and did the expansion of medicaid, so those were people who primarily do not have medicaid and will not get it over the next 10 years who would have under current law at the time. not really talking about people dropping for medicaid but -- >> this is just a simple math. you can come up with a simple estimate and compare it with the baseline. you are not providing the american people with the information. >> there will be an opportunity

at the end to submit additional questions that we might want to have answered. next would be senator van hollen. >> thank you, mr. chairman, dr. hall, welcome. senator sanders covered some of the issues i was going to ask you about, but i want to ask you about the impact of cr's on the work of the congressional budget office. we heard from the pentagon spokesperson a few weeks ago that going from cr to cr, we have had four results in wasteful spending at the defense department, and has negative consequences for our defense. cr makeng from cr to your work at cbo harder, and what are the consequences? >> it does make things harder. we have actually put off some things, some computer work and things like that. rightcontinue under a cr,

now i think we will have to curtail our higher and move down and moveds -- hire down a few spots, cancel some training and travel. it does have a consequence for us. >> in terms of your planning, does it make your planning harder and does that lead to inefficiencies in terms of being able to hire when you need to? >> yes, it does. >> congress reauthorize the children's health insurance program for six years, and as was referenced, the congressional budget office estimated that it would actually save money. said $6 billion, compared to the earlier baseline, is that right? >> yes. >> your analysis of savings w not as a result of the cost of providing health care services to these children going down, was it? >> no. >> it was the cost of the

alternative going up, right? >> that is right. >> the alternative is the health care provided in the affordable care act exchanges primarily, is that right? >> yes. --and the reason the primary the reason, the primary reason those costs when up was as a result of the fact that the elimination of the individual mandate resulted, according to cbo, and the cost of premiums going up by 10%. >> yes. >> this is an important point for people to understand, the reason the cost of providing services to chip went down is because those children, if they were denied that alternative through 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, the cost to the taxpayer would go up because when those premiums go up, we all pay a higher tax needs of help meet the those individuals, is that right? >> correct. >> that is my -- it just shows that when you do one thing to pull the rug out of the affordable care act, when you get rid of the individual mandate, you increase the premiums by 10%. and so that meant if you did not extend the children's health insurance program, those kids coming into the affordable care act exchanges would have been paying higher premiums as a result -- higher premiums as a result of the tax credits. premiums. as a result, the tax credits would have gone up. we saved $6 billion, but the

savings was relative to the baseline, and the baseline costs went up, primarily because of the move in the tax bill to get rid of the individual mandate. so i just hope members will understand the consequences of their action with respect to actually saving taxpayers' money and providing an important benefit to our kids' health. i appreciate the congressional budget office because sometimes some of us agree and sometimes we disagree, but my goodness, if we did not have some kind of referee in the united states congress, we would have more of a free-for-all then we arty have. -- already have. i am grateful for somebody being able to take an objective look at this and provide an analysis that we can use. there are too many -- we are having a dispute nationally over what is fact and what is fiction

here it i'm glad you provided a baseline of what is fact in regards to the budget. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, dr. hall. i want to talk about partisanship. i found three things this mornin bipartisan way, that i agree with the ranking member today. i want to put that in the record. i agree with his first open a comment about we need to be serious about the budget process , and recognize that it is broken. we all want to find a way to solve the daca issue, and the third, we need to find a way to simple fight our titles and bills. i also agree with my colleague senator van hollen. thank you that you are attempting to be an objective source for information for modeling and anticipation and projecting the impact of potential legislation. i want to talk about how to achieve that. first of all, this is one of the

most partisan committees that i have seen. i was on judiciary, it is partisan as well, but this is a partisan committee and unnecessarily so. it is partisan because of the budget process. members on the other side of the committee, several members, senator whitehouse, senator kaine, members on this side, we all agree the process is broken and it creates a situation because the budget is not a law, it is a resolution. the majority crams down the throats of the minority their political statement of what they think they should do on spending. you get caught in the middle. this will change at some poin in the future. they will be in the majority, we will be in the majorit no one will like it. as is a broken process and we need to fix it. you play an important role and i think it is critical being as nonpartisan as you can be.

i agree with the chairmen and ranking member that they should be involved in the priorities of what you are allocating time and resources to. you heard important questions being asked during the health care debate and the tax debate that did not get answered. how do you respond? i want to talk about how you are assuring that we maintain a nonpartisan position in here. i am sorry, on the priorities, would you address that quickly? we do so much technical assistance, which often leads to a formal cost estimate. by technical assistance, we are looking at legislation and giving feedback and formal estimates. that is so often done by a committee or leadership, and they want it done confidentially because it is sort of technical assistance. we wind up doing a lot of work over time with the budget

committee would not know what we were working on, and we cannot tell them that. we have developed what we think is the most effective thing we can do. that is when we are jammed up on topics, we look to the committee of jurisdiction to tell them, we have these things going on, tell us what your priority is. >> the ultimate priority exists -- or resides in the budget committee. >> that is right. >> in terms of this partisanship, this is before your time, so i think you can be objective to the response. the question is how to avoid this in the future. it is one thing to disagree with projections and another to look at reality and compared back to projections. in two thousand 13, cbo predicted that obamacare enrollment in the individual predicted2013, cbo that obamacare enrollment in the individual market be -- respectively.

the actual enrollment was 11 million, 12 million, and 10 million. when you see 100% error, it raises questions in my mind about impartiality, particularly when the author of those estimates, the head of the cbo's health analysis group was the head of hillary clinton's health task force. how do you and sure -- you were not there. how do we assure ourselves that we are getting a nonpartisan, objective viewpoint, to senator van hollen's viewpoint? >> we do a lot to try to seek guidance and advice from experts. we actually do our best to go back and look at how we did. we went back and looked at how the estimates turned out there. the only thing i would say in defense, sometimes it is really hard to estimate these things. i think one of the conclusions i would make in going back,

certainly with the exchanges, we were off. we were not as far off on other things like spending, but everybody else was as well. we were probably more accurate than most others. >> does not give me a lot of comfort. >> it goes to the issue of bias. becan be off and we can wrong, but hopefully we are not consistently wrong. are concerned we consistently overestimating the exchange participation. we try to fix it and we are still overestimating. i have a background in economic data. you do not want to have revisions all one way. that is what we would like to have. , tryy very hard to do that it with the processes and try to do it that way, and try to be transparent. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator whitehouse. >> first let me echo what my friend senator purdue has just said.

we have seen the budget partisan become 100% and 0% meaningful. in fact, the most important work that we do here is not even budget work. it is simply the political task by the majority of opening the procedural gateway to another partisan political effort down the road in the senate. short of that, we don't need dr. hall. we don't need staff. we don't need anything because we don't do anything in this committee. there is a reason that over and over again, we have committee hearings, even nominally on the budget of the united states, and nobody bothers to show up in the audience. i guess people know perfectly well that what we do here has exactly zero effect. once appropriators got

a 60 vote to beating margin in the senate on appropriations bills, the budget committee's penalty for breaking our budget, which is you have to get 60 votes, made us useless. the fact that we only look at appropriating funds, not the far larger amount of money that goes sloshing out through the back door of the tax code, not the health care expenditures of the country. just contributes to my sense that we have made ourselves a useless committee, and it is something i am extremely eager to correct on a bipartisan basis. the issue that bedevils us the most is the health care cost issue. dr. hall, i think you have seen me do these before. this is one of my least favorite graphs that has life expectancy in years in leading developed countries, and cost per capita

in health care. basically all of our major .ompetitors are here in this we are way the heck out here. we cost a fortune more per capita than any other industrialized country, and we have life expectancy comparable to chile and the czech republic. it is not like we are gaining massive health danes for that massive expenditure. -- health gains for that massive expenditure. you guys do some good work, and this is one of the interesting things i have seen. the red line on top is the projection for health care spending that was made back here. that was in august of 2010. in january of 2017, this greenline, the actual got baked into a new projection. the new projection for this 10

year period is lower by the amount of this green block than what cbo previously estimated. is $3.3 trillion in health care savings. if we could pass something in the senate and in the house that gave us $3.3 trillion in health care savings, that would be one of the most significant things that we could do. the problem is, we don't know exactly why that happened. that is a combination of early experience and algorithms that you guys run to make your projections with that we do not have a lot of transparency into. so to me, if you are looking at the possibility of multiple trillions of dollars in future health care savings, it ought to be a critical priority, a bipartisan priority of this committee and your office to be trying to figure out and explain

what are the things that can help make that happen? what are the things that might die lid up little bit? if you can get $3.3 trillion, why not $6.6 trillion? i hope we will spend more money on staff. this becomes a really important priority, explaining why. if you can explain why, we will try to do more of it. have anay, we accountable care organization in rhode island. it is basically doctors offices that have agreed to sign up for facing a bet they can give better care at lower cost to their patients. in return, they get a bonus from cms for doing a good job. some of the best ones in the country are in rhode island, and they are seeing their cost per

patient actually go down year-over-year. they are generating millions of dollars in savings just in their little local practices. so somehow there is a connection between being able to save $3.3 trillion over 10 years in health care expense, and these local experiences that we are all seeing. that i think is a job worth doing in a committee that otherwise appears to have no purpose. look forward to working with you on tt, dr. hall. >> that falls right into our category of analytical reports that we do, exactly the sort of thing that we like to look at, that is really of interest budget wise. >> thank you. of 2016, wening said the budget process was broken and we did 13 hearings and had a number of things that we hoped we would pass before the election, so we would not

know who the president or the majority would be, that we did not have enough people involved in that process, so it got stopped before the election. >> don't give up hope, mr. chairman. and i am planning on doing some hearings based on some task forces led by individuals on this committee, bipartisan. i suspect that you have an intense interest in health care. senator cotton. welcome to the committee. our newest member. >> thank you. i am saddened to hear that the senators of rhode island in georgia think it is -- and georgia think it is partisan. i want to start with a bipartisan conversation that will matter to both sides of the aisle about how the cbo interacts with embers of this committee, and congress as a --

members of this committee, and congress as a whole. the analysis cbo did last fall about medicaid coverage losses under one version of our health care bill, i am not sure which some of your analysts came to the republican congress meeting to explain a loss under medicaid. that analysis turns out to have assumed that some number of the 18 non-expansion states would expand medicaid despite their previous decisions not to since the 2010 law. if our bill had passed, those states would then decide to drop medicaid. which states would be doing that, especially if texas and florida would be doing it, the two largest expansion states , if you didn't have one of those two expand, you could i get to one million total totalion, the analysts --

population, the analysts could not tell us that. they just go with pass programs. i found that pretty astonishing. that's more of a political just than an- judgment economic assessment. there is no good expedition for why they reached that conclusion. i found that to be fairly consistent with my steady of cbo rep arts, which are usually pretty good when it comes to government revenues and outlays, but leaves something to be desired when it comes to things like political judgment or market forces and incentives or private individuals. i believe those assumptions are rarely made adequately public or explained. it makes it harder for us to do our job and harder for the public to understand the kind of projections you are making. let me stop there and see if you would like to respond to that. dr. hall: sure. we are not particularly happy to

make desert of assumption. it is key to understanding the proposal. how many states will choose to expand or notxp one wouldse no expand, that would affect our numbers. if we chose that some would expand, we are tried to do that. at past history and put states in different buckets. we have different buckets, most likely to expand, least likely, and the middle. our thinking was that we didn't want to talk about particular states. if you are wrong about a state that should be in one could hear and what over here, it could be that it should be here and went over here. cotton: i don't want to get into the details. that was a small universe of data, 18 data points. it isn't millions of data points, as you often use.

the kind of analysis and a sum made was not explicit in the room or to be received. it took four of your analysts coming to a to us in detail for senators to understand it and for the american people understand it. why not make that kind of thing public? do different scenario analysis and make things more explicit? dr. hall: we are tried to do some of that. we have only summoned people, so much time. these are trade-offs. but if congress, if you all want moreime spent on that sort of trespassing, we will do it. sen. cotton: how many people do you have? dr. hall: health care, complete health care, we have 40 people. the people that are really engaged, it is probably less than 20 people in all these estimates. we have 230 people total. we have 40 on health care, lots of other buckets would have to cover. we are not huge.

peopledo have some working full out on things. sen. cotton: let me complete the story. in 2013, i was a new congressman and there was an immigration of a going on at the time. the cbo produced an immigration estimate. it was controversial. on all quarters with estimates made about future immigrant legal versus illegal, impact on population, impact on wages and so forth. i want to get more information on that. i spoke with your predecessor. after sometime, he offered to come by. he said they don't have the resources. i said i will continue. you don't have to come to my office. two years ago, i was modeling complex economic and business problems at a private consulting firm. i understand how to work a spreadsheet. i will sit with your analyst at

her desk and go through everytng and that was refused toe. is that an appropriate response to a member of congrs? dr. ha: no. we would like to do a lot better. an. cotton: if i have question about a future analysis, i can come and walk through someone with assumptions and modeling? dr. hall: i never refused to talk with a member and have staff go through things. sen. cotton: thank you. sen. cassidy: thank you for coming today. ennedy: thank you for coming today. cbo is. known as a neutral arbiter. i get that. you and all your people are very, very bright. that much is clear to me.

you are serving us, but you are also serving the american people. i will make a couple of suggestions of what we need but, more what the american people need. number one, you have to move more quickly. i know that is easy for me to say. for a variety of reasons, i think the pace has quickened in many respects. when we get in the middle of discussing an issue. number two, you got to be clearer. good -- and iany don't want to overstate this, please. that's why i preface what i am saying here with how extraordinary i think the work is you do.

but the analysis has to be thorough. it's got to be written in non-swahili so that the american and the press can pick it up and say, ok, here are the conclusions. here's why cbo reached some conclusions. and here are the assumptions they are making, understanding that you are not clairvoyant and predicting the future. you have to make certain assumptions. with a accompany that phd, detailed, dissertationype document. and i'm not being critical, which i can assure you that more congress members then get credit for will read. oh it is important, it seems to me, is that we get it quickly

and that the american people have an opportunity to understand it at her. that's not because the american people are stupid. they are not. i have said this before. most americans do not read aristotle everyday because they are too busy earning a living. but they will figure it out. suggesting that we can do a better job of doing that -- of helping them do that. that is my comment. i know it is easy to criticize and monday morning cornerback and you are under a lot of pressure. but we needed a lot faster. and the american people, given your well-deserved reputation, the reserve more clarity. with ahat gently and spirit of gratitude for the good work you do. dr. hall: thank you.

i think you have identified the two biggest problems we have, the responsiveness and the transparency. unfortunately, they sometimes collide with fixed resources. kennedy: i know. dr. hall: that is why we are asking for more resources. se. nneyd: i have to go to another committee. but we appreciate you being here today. dr. hall: thank you. boozman: thank you for being here. hard. you work awful our purpose is to help you get the job done. that you knowngs

better than anybody, you are kind of in the central position that we sadly can't do things many times without you all weighing into it. one of the things that somebody ought to look at, yourself or gao or whatever, would be how much not getting information, how much that adversely affects the ability of congress to do its job. again, that is a huge deal. the other thing i think is you have -- and i know problems with resources and things like that. but we need to measure things. you all weigh in on bunches of stuff. many times, that is accurate. sometimes, that is not as accurate. sometimes it is not because of the fact that there is a mistake to be made. it is just a very difficult to do these things. i think it would be helpful for us to know the areas that we can truly rely on the information

versus a guess. but you can on do that through metrics. you have to have the ability to check yourselves o. i don't think that is happening right now. can we talk about that? and if you don't have the resources to do that, what would it take for us to give you that ability? i do think, regardless of what we do, you need to have that information. we need to have that information as we make really important decisions. dr. hall: one of the things that we do every year, we call it an -- an analysis of actuals. we sit down and look at all the budget categories and see what happened during the year, what we predicted during the year, how did we do, how far were we off, how close we are, how we are going to adjust our view of this going forward. one of the things we have been thinking about -- it may help with this -- is maybe start

publishing our analysis of actuals so you can see exactly how we did these different budget categories. the tricky part is sometimes the budget categories are a little harder than pieces of legislation. it is hard to know about a small piece of legislation. but this will give you an idea of where we are being more accurate and less accurate. sen. boozman: sometimes we run into disagreements there's areas where e committee staff truly are experts in particular areas and have significant disagreements. i would hope that there is dialogue to try and work out the and at times may be change your perspective as to what is going on. dr. hall: one of the things we now do, we get a piece of

legislation, they have some analysis that they have looked at and we make sure to look at that. we always go further to do an independent look, but we want to be sure that the committee feels like we have given them a fair look at what they have looked at. i think that is an important point to be sure that we are unbiased. agree to wheni you are here last time, you talked about the problems of retaining qualified people and in yourthink you sit testimony, over the past three 60%,, back then come over 60 --d made an offer in in academic positions. what do we do to help you get the people that you need and retain people? and more competitive?

dr. hall: one of thth that has changed is we had been capped so that all the salaries had to be basically below a member salary, below my salary. while a lot of the people were competing for senior managers in the executive branch, they have a higher pay scale. they can make $30,000 more than i maker anybody at cbo. going forward, we will be allowed to pay our senior managers on as much as the executive scale. not that we are going to do it. sen. boozman: but you have that option. dr. hall: yes. we are try to be careful on how we use it. sen. boozman: so retaining and also recruiting? dr. hall: yes. sen. boozman: that's good. chairman: i appreciate the input from members today.

there are a lot of things that we, as well as cbo, need to do to improve the process. -- you had it in your opening comments and it stuck with me. i think it has been echoed a little bit here, but not directly. have you condered serving the aggregator, collecting things from outside tanks and reporting that is part of the transparency, as well as the answer that you come up with? is that a potential solution? dr. hall: i'm not sure it is. we are happy to do what we are asked to do. get withe things you cbo is consistent high-quality. we work very hard to be unbiased. this is one of the issues where we make models available. part of the advantage of cbo is not just that we have these models but we are the ones who run the models. if we want to get input from

think tanks and etc., i think that is a good idea and i think we do in fact going talk to think tanks and get their views on things, get their feedback on how we do things. we are happy to try to do that more and see if that helps. as to whether think tanks will spend a lot of time producing competing estimates in some of the -- in so many of the small things we do, that is probably not realistic. but i believe there is value in having us assure you at least that we go and talk to think tanks and spend some time getting their views on things. sen. enzi: appreciate that. learned a lot today. i think there is a general agreement that we have a broken budget process. i've watched this for years now and shared it for a while. budgetshat mo of the never lasts more than 40 days before there is a waiver of the budget.

as senator whitehouse wanted out, it only takes 40 votes to overcome it, which is -- six euros to overcome it, which is the same as to ask legislation -- 60 votes to overcome it, which is the same it takes to pass legislation. there ought to be a higher threshold for higher numbers. we should consider that if we are to have any possibility of difference.a i will continue to hold hearings and review the materials from those hearings. come today, some of the things -- from today, some of the things, i did hear that this is the most partisan committee. i want people to know that it has been the most partisan committee since 1974, when it

was first initiated. the process has been for the majority party to hold opening statements so that the other side can comment on the budget and then let them see the budget. never considered that to be fair, so we changed to that process. they now five days in advance and it helped to expedite the markup and the hearing. of course, in exchange for getting at five days earlier, everybody has to turn in their amendments. one of the things we learned working with senator kennedy was, when those amendments come in early, -- and men minsk come in early, there is a seed a whenbility in everyone -- those amendments come in early, there is a seed of possibilities in every one of those amendments can see if we can't get people together to find a common one that will work. that is what i am hoping will

come out of this budget process and make it less partisan. when theoesn't exist, results don't exist more than 40 days, then reconciliation becomes the most of what impart. and reconciliation has its shortcomings, too, because every amendment has to have a budgetary impact of some significance. thate rules that follow make actual legislation very difficult. but if that is the only way to move forward, then that becomes the method of choice. and both sides have used it. i think there are better ways to legislate. i hope that we can get to that. now, on the things that we did today, i think when of the key messages was also that assumptionsatter. we talk about transparency. there aren't many people that will follow a model, with all the different arrows and things that would be involved in that.

but, sure, even tougher to explain verbally. some of the assumptions have a pretty good ability to -- some of the assumptions, they have a pretty good ability to understand. transparencymake to talk about for noneconomists, which i assume are most of the people in the committee and most of the people in the senate. i also liked the idea that everything should be written in non-swahili. [laughter] and we should have some better titles for our bills that aren't quite as biased. of course, they might be, but it tends to get people not to -- people to vote against them, depending on how good they sound, whether the text is that are not. i appreciate your comment about

allowing people to be able to sit down with the analyst and get better understanding of where the information came from. i like that. particularly for people who have been analysis -- an analyst, that would be very hopeful. we will continue to work with you and try to engage the committee and doing more oversight work in particular , not that we would legislate in, but that we would pass information on to the committee of legislation. with that, this hearing is concluded. people can turn in a list of questions if they wish. we will send those over and i'm sure we will get a response. thank you. dr. hall: thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017]

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>> some news from the world economic forum in doubles. steven mnuchin is casting the dollar the planning valley is a boon for the american economy. the weakening value of the dollar will ultimately bolster trade. obviously, a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade an opportunity, secretary mnuchin said, adding that the trump administration is not concerned about the dollars short-term value can you can read that story today in the hell. coming up friday, president trump to address the world economic forum, becoming the first u.s. president to address the forum since present clinton.

you can watch that on c-span 2. at 2:00 p.m. eastern, the white house briefing will be a live right here on c-span. coming up tomorrow, former secretaries of state henry kissinger and george schulz and richard armitage will testify before the senate armed services committee, looking at u.s. national security strategy. live coverage gets underway at 10:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. with landmark cases returning next month for season 2, c-span senior history producer shared background on the upcoming series. our: by popular demand, it is returning. as i listen to the callers this morning, they are talking about race, about the powers of andress, constitution, immigration. what we have in season 2 are 12 landmark supreme court cases that take you through the

history of the country and take you through the cases that really have something to do it today. along with the national constitution center, we had a long set of cases. what we wanted to do was take cases that had a human interest story to them. in the end, these cases affect human beings across the country. so the cases came down to did they have an impact in their time? did they change the court? did they change the country in their time? and how relevant are they today? and all of them are relevant today. the first one, mccullough versus maryland, it's the power of hours to write laws that can overrule the states. 1986 that anthony kennedy mentioned many times is all about immigration. we will have two very good guests here on set in washington and we have a journal's producer who will go around the country to the places that help tell the stories for each one of those cases. wo, we will go to san

francisco. it is about the letter mats in san francisco's. -- san francisco. lissa laurent's case, -- civil rights case, that is when jim crow laws began in this country. we want to hear your phone calls, tweets, interact with the audience and talk about how these shows are relevant today. >> fisher to see c-span -- season 2 of landmark cases. to help you better understand each case, we have a companion guide written by a veteran supreme courtournals, tony morrow. $8.95 plussts shipping and handling. go to www.c-span.org /landmarkcases.

up next, a forum on government ethics regulations for federal employees and president trump's decision to maintain control of his business operations while in office. they include the messenger, recusal for matters of conflict of interest, and protections for whistleblowers. nicole: good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. we are so happy to see you here this afternoon. i am nicole austin-hillery, and i serve as the director and counsel of the washington office of the brennan center for justice. we want to thank our friends here at nyu-d.c. and the nyu center for co-hosting this event with us this afternoon and for being such a great partner to the brennan center for justice. on behalf of the brennan center, we are pleased you have joined us for what we know will be an exciting and interesting conversation on presidential ethics law, and this ia