Statement of
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Director
Appropriation Request for Fiscal Year 2005
before the
Subcommittee on Legislative Branch
Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate
March 4, 2004
This statement is embargoed until 11:00 a.m. (EST) on Thursday, March
4, 2004. The contents may not be published, transmitted, or otherwise
communicated by any print, broadcast, or electronic media before that time. |
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am pleased to present
the fiscal year 2005 budget request for the Congressional Budget Office
(CBO). The mission of CBO is to provide the Congress with timely objective,
nonpartisan analyses of the economy and the budget and to furnish the information
and cost estimates required for the Congressional budget process.
The Congressional Budget Office's proposed budget for fiscal year 2005
is effectively a "current-services" request, in which the increases from
2004 are primarily for pay, benefits, and general inflation. The request
totals $35,455,000, a $1.8 million, or 5.5 percent, increase over the appropriation
for fiscal year 2004 (after the rescission of 0.59 percent).
The total increase requested is dominated by $1.6 million for expected
increases in staff salaries and benefits. Funding for salaries and benefits
constitutes 88 percent of CBO's budget, and those costs will grow by 5.5
percent in 2005. Additional factors include a new $75,000 charge for telecommunications
services associated with the Alternate Computing Facility, a component
of the legislative branch's disaster recovery system, and a $32,000, or
8.1 percent, increase in CBO's portion of the cost of operating the Federal
Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB). The remainder of CBO's budget
request increases by 3.2 percent over that in 2004, a rate of growth affected
by the fact that this portion of the budget will absorb almost half of
the 0.59 percent rescission in 2004.
With the requested funds for 2005, CBO plans to continue to support
the Congress in exercising its responsibilities for the budget of the United
States government. CBO participates in the Congressional budget process
by providing analyses required by law or requested by the House and Senate
Budget Committees; the Committees on Appropriations, Ways and Means, and
Finance; other committees; and individual Members. In particular, CBO:
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Reports on the outlook for the budget and the economy to help the Congress
prepare for the legislative year;
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Analyzes the likely effects of the President's budgetary proposals on outlays
and revenues;
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Estimates the costs of legislative proposals, including formal cost estimates
for all bills reported by committees of the House and Senate and for unfunded
mandates on states and localities and the private sector;
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Constructs statistical, behavioral, and computational models to project
short- and long-term costs and revenues of government programs; and
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Conducts policy studies of governmental activities having major economic
and budgetary impacts.
In fiscal year 2005, CBO's request will allow the agency to build on current
efforts:
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Increase the number and reduce the preparation time of reports and in-depth
analyses for the Congress, extending progress begun in 2003. The request
will support a workload estimated at 2,120 legislative and mandate cost
estimates, 82 major analytical reports (11 percent more than in 2003, which
itself represented a 76 percent increase over 2002), 74 other publications,
and a heavy schedule of Congressional testimony.
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Consolidate gains from additional staff resources provided by the Congress
for 2004 to augment the agency's ability to estimate revenues and conduct
dynamic analyses of the budget. Overall, the request will support 235 full-time-equivalent
positions, the same number as in 2004. It includes an across-the-board
pay adjustment of 3.5 percent for staff earning a salary of $100,000 or
less, which is consistent with the pay adjustment requested by other legislative
branch agencies, along with a projected increase in benefits of 7.0 percent.
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Fund a combination of promotions and merit increases for all staff, including
those whose salary exceeds $100,000 and who do not receive automatic annual
across-the-board increases.
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Provide $429,000 for CBO's share of FASAB's budget.
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Provide $75,000 (previously paid by the House of Representatives) for telecommunications
services for the Alternate Computing Facility.
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Complete the replacement of CBO's Budget Analysis Data System, the agency's
primary budget-tracking system, with a lower-cost, more-capable in-house
system. After accomplishing that replacement midyear in 2005, CBO plans
to continue to develop and exploit the capabilities of the new system--to
improve the speed and breadth of the agency's analyses--during the remainder
of the year and into the next, but at a much lower annual development cost.
Before I close, I would like to thank the Committee for its support of
CBO's 2004 budget request, in particular, the two new positions that it
approved to strengthen the agency's ability to forecast the economy and
project revenues. And I would also cite the Committee's ongoing support
of the student loan repayment benefit, which is an increasingly valuable
tool in CBO's recruiting.
I look forward to answering any questions that you might have about
this request.
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