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[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                      CREATING A CULTURE OF FISCAL
                   RESPONSIBILITY: ASSESSING THE ROLE
                   OF THE CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                        COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

           HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 31, 2024

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-10

                               __________

           Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget
           
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                       Available on the Internet:
                            www.govinfo.gov
                            
                               __________

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
55-831                     WASHINGTON : 2024                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                 
                            
                        COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET

                  JODEY C. ARRINGTON, Texas, Chairman
RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina         BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania,
TOM McCLINTOCK, California             Ranking Member
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin            BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania          JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas            EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia    DANIEL T. KILDEE, Michigan
BEN CLINE, Virginia                  SCOTT H. PETERS, California
BOB GOOD, Virginia                   BARBARA LEE, California
JACK BERGMAN, Michigan               LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
A. DREW FERGUSON IV, Georgia         JIMMY PANETTA, California
CHIP ROY, Texas                      JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
BLAKE D. MOORE, Utah                 SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
DAVID G. VALADAO, California         ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota,
RON ESTES, Kansas                      Vice Ranking Member
LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan            DAVID J. TRONE, Maryland
MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota        BECCA BALINT, Vermont
RUDY YAKYM III, Indiana              ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT, 
JOSH BRECHEEN, Oklahoma                  Virginia
CHUCK EDWARDS, North Carolina        ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York

                           Professional Staff

                      Gary Andres, Staff Director
                  Greg Waring, Minority Staff Director
                           
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held in Washington, D.C., January 31, 2024...............     1
    Hon. Jodey C. Arrington, Chairman, Committee on the Budget...     1
        Prepared Statement of....................................     4
    Hon. Brendan F. Boyle, Ranking Member, Committee on the 
      Budget.....................................................     7
        Prepared Statement of....................................     9
    Hon. Sheila Jackson Lee, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      statement submitted for the record.........................    12
    Dr. Eric M. Leeper, Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor of 
      Economics at the University of Virginia, Distinguished 
      Visiting Scholar for the Mercatus Center at George Mason 
      University, statement submitted for the record.............    15
    Dr. Gary Adams, President and CEO, National Cotton Council, 
      statement submitted for the record.........................    18
    Mr. Duane Schulthess, CEO, Vital Transformation, statement 
      submitted for the record...................................    20
    Hon. Phillip Swagel, Ph.D., Director, Congressional Budget 
      Office.....................................................    23
        Prepared Statement of....................................    25
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................    66
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................    94
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................    96
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................    98
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   100
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   104
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   106
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   108
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   111
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   112
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   114
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   117
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   120
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   128
    Hon. Michael Burgess, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   129
    Questions submitted for the record...........................   132
    Answers submitted for the record.............................   137

 
                      CREATING A CULTURE OF FISCAL
                   RESPONSIBILITY: ASSESSING THE ROLE
                   OF THE CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

                              ----------                             

                      WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2024

                          House of Representatives,
                                   Committee on the Budget,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in Room 
210, Cannon Building, Hon. Jodey Arrington [Chairman of the 
Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Arrington, Norman, Grothman, 
Smucker, Burgess, Carter, Cline, Good, Bergman, Ferguson, Roy, 
Moore, Estes, McClain, Fischbach, Yakym, Brecheen, Edwards, 
Boyle, Higgins, Schakowsky, Blumenauer, Kildee, Peters, 
Doggett, Panetta, Jackson-Lee, and Balint.
    Chairman Arrington. Well, good morning. This hearing will 
come to order.
    Welcome to the Committee on the Budget's hearing on 
oversight of the Congressional Budget Office. Today, we will 
hear testimony from the Honorable Phillip Swagel, the Director 
of the Congressional Budget Office. I want to yield myself now 
such time as I may consume to just frame this up for today.
    We are going to conduct our constitutional and legal 
oversight responsibility, and I want everyone to understand 
that we haven't had an oversight hearing, which is our 
congressional and constitutional responsibility, in six years. 
In six years. So before I levy the constructive criticism on 
your operation and have constructively critical questions of 
you, I want to first take ownership of and speak to Congress' 
responsibility and oversight.
    We have 40 percent, roughly, of our programs, departments, 
and agencies that have not been authorized that we continue to 
fund. That is a massive dereliction of oversight 
responsibility. We have a growing amount of improper payments, 
and what was $150 billion a year prior to COVID is now $230 
billion a year. The authorizing committees, the Oversight 
Committee, the Budget Committee, we are not doing our job well 
in stewardship of tax dollars by allowing that improper payment 
number to continue to grow with very little done to bend the 
curve on that.
    So, look, we passed a budget resolution out of this 
Committee for the first time in five years. I mean, a real 
budget resolution, not a shell for reconciliation. Both parties 
have done it. This isn't to shame any party. It is to say, we 
have got to set a better standard for doing our job that the 
people sent us here to do and that the Constitution and the law 
requires.
    So, CBO was created in 1974 in the Congressional Budget Act 
and the current budget process along with it, 50 years of this 
budget process. Phill, we look to make the changes necessary to 
give greater incentive for Members of Congress to do the right 
and responsible thing. That is underway. It is a bipartisan 
effort.
    The mission of CBO, I am sure you will speak to this, but 
as I understand it, is to assist the Budget Committees, the 
House and Senate, with information and analysis so that we can 
conduct our legislative business. That is all legislation, 
appropriations, budget-related, authorizing legislation as 
well; and that you report to this Committee and to the 
Committee, the Budget Committee in the Senate. It is my 
understanding that the customer that utilizes your information, 
that trusts and relies on the objectivity and the accuracy of 
it, is Members of Congress, and we are doing the work of the 
American people. Their will is reflected in our lawmaking. So 
we have got to get the information analysis as accurate and as 
timely as possible for us to serve the American people well.
    There are a host of factors that contribute to timeliness 
and accuracy, in my humble opinion. Methodology, making sure we 
understand what the methodology is. What is in the black box 
that spits out these scores and other analyses?
    Outside input. What input do you rely on from other 
sources? Who are the other sources? Are they balanced in terms 
of their philosophical views and ideological views? Is there 
enough transparency for criticism and peer review from these 
entities, not the least of which would be our Committee and 
other Members of Congress?
    How are you organized? Do you have the capacity to be 
timely? Do you have the resources? Do you have the expertise? 
Do you have metrics and goals? And do you have the incentives, 
carrots and sticks, to make sure that we are getting the right 
outcome out of CBO?
    Reporting documents. How often do you report? Are they 
clear so that I can understand if we are off by a trillion 
dollars on the deficit that I don't have to go find an email 
buried in my stack of emails to learn of that? Is that 
something we are communicating directly about? Is that 
something that my Democrat colleagues and my Ranking Member 
also have in a timely way?
    I have got to engage more. I am going to say that right 
now, you and I have to talk more. This Committee needs more 
time with you informally and formally. We are going to have 
more oversight hearings and we are going to work together to 
get this communication flow both ways working better than it 
has been over the last year. It is my first year. I plan to do 
a lot better.
    Phill, we have got a plan. We have got a plan to deal with 
improper payments. We have got a plan to deal with getting our 
budget done on time. We have got a plan to focus on mandatory 
and not obsess over just the discretionary budget. We have a 
plan to hold authorizers accountable for unauthorized spending.
    So we have got a plan to do better and we have to, but I 
need to understand what the plan is to do better at CBO 
because--and I know I am going over time here, so I am going to 
shut this down because I don't want a revolt here on the dais, 
but it is not just the deficit off by over 100 percent and 
underreporting. GT Thompson sent a letter and you should read 
every Chairman's letter, but he said over the last ten years--
it is just an example--the farm programs, the commodity 
programs, were overestimating in their spend 80 percent of the 
time. Not by 80 percent, 80 percent of the time. The nutrition 
program was underestimated over the last ten years 60 percent 
of the time, and I have just got a litany of your customers who 
are very concerned with those key objectives, timeliness and 
accuracy, without going through all of them that I have written 
down.
    I know there will be time for questions, but I hope you 
will agree that we can do better. I am going to do my part, and 
I want you to hear today from my colleagues about their 
sentiments and their perception.
    By the way, if you ask me or my mom, I am tall, dark, and 
handsome, and I do everything just perfectly, but the real 
question is, how do my colleagues here think I am doing? How do 
my Republican colleagues in the Steering Committee who elected 
me for this position think I am doing? How do my constituents?
    Phill, the question is, how does your customer perceive 
you? Because for better or for worse, that is the job you are 
doing, and that is the job I am doing. I believe these guys are 
your customers, at a minimum, maybe I would say in this room, 
they are your customers, your shareholders, and your bosses, 
all of them.
    So with that, I would ask my Ranking Member for his 
comments, as well, as much time as you may consume.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Arrington follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mr. Boyle. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank everyone for 
being here, including our guest.
    First, before I direct my comments to Mr. Swagel and talk 
about the Congressional Budget Office, first, I just want to 
share great news that should make all of us happy here, and I 
know it will. Headline from a publication not known to being 
friendly to this Administration: ``U.S. Winning World Economic 
War.'' The first sentence, ``The United States economy grew 
faster than any other large, advanced economy last year by a 
wide margin, and is on track to do so again in 2024.''
    Almost every day we are seeing headlines just like that and 
the economic data underlying it to support it, and that is all 
news that we can, as Americans, take great pride in.
    Now, to the express purpose of today's hearing, I want to 
thank you, Dr. Swagel, as I have done a number of times in 
private, I want to thank you individually, but also the 270 or 
so staffers who you represent, fine public servants who perform 
an incredibly important function and do so with diligence and 
professionalism.
    I also want to thank the Chairman for the fact that we are 
taking time today to conduct oversight of the Congressional 
Budget Office, talk about things that are working well and also 
things that we can improve. I would, however, urge caution to 
any colleagues today who intend to raise questions about CBO's 
impartiality, transparency, or the accuracy of their 
projections writ large.
    The reality is, and you can look over the last several 
decades, CBO at times has both under projected and over 
projected deficits, under projected and over projected 
revenues, and released projections that were politically 
inconvenient to both Democrats and Republicans. I personally 
know that I think when CBO releases a projection that I agree 
with, you guys are doing a fantastic job, and when you release 
one I disagree with, that damn CBO, what are they thinking? I 
have a feeling all 435 Members of the House might find that 
rather familiar in what I just said.
    It is impossible to 100 percent predict the future. The 
famous physicist Niels Bohr once said, ``Predictions are hard 
to make, especially about the future.'' And certainly if there 
is someone here who had a way to predict, for instance, an 
unprecedented global pandemic or the Great Recession, well, I 
would love to speak to you before I get in my bet on this 
year's Super Bowl.
    So the reality is this, despite the challenges of making 
predictions and despite not having a perfect record, time-in 
and time-out, CBO does high-quality work, but again, I am open 
toward ways that we can improve the process and ultimately 
improve the end product.
    Toward that end, I am incredibly proud that just last week 
I introduced a bill, cosponsored by Chairman Arrington, that 
would help reduce the delays that CBO often suffers in 
receiving data that they need to support congressional 
decision-making, and frankly, this has been a chronic problem, 
whether it is a Democratic Administration or Republican 
Administration, and it is incumbent upon us in Congress to 
solve.
    Speaking of the role of Congress and not CBO, we are going 
to talk today about a ``culture of fiscal responsibility.'' 
Let's be clear. It is not the role of the CBO to inculcate a 
fiscally responsible culture. That is our job as Members of 
Congress. So let's not pass the blame or pass the buck onto the 
men and women of CBO for those instances in which this 
institution has failed.
    So with that, I will pause here, give back the remaining 30 
seconds of my time, and I thank you again, Dr. Swagel, and the 
men and women of the Congressional Budget Office.
    [The prepared statement of Ranking Member Boyle follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Arrington. Speaking of timeliness, my Ranking 
Member always likes to point out when he finishes his remarks 
in that 5-minute timeframe, so I appreciate that. I know my 
colleagues do.
    Mr. Boyle. A culture of responsibility.
    Chairman Arrington. For sure. It starts at the top, they 
say, right?
    Okay. I appreciate the comments by the Ranking Member. In 
the interest of time, if any Members have opening statements, I 
ask that you submit them for the record. I will hold the record 
open until the end of the day to accommodate those Members who 
may not have prepared written statements.
    [The information follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Arrington. Now let's turn it over to Director 
Swagel. Again, thank you for your time. I won't go through your 
resume, but it is awfully impressive: Federal Reserve, the 
Council of Economic Advisors, think tanks, higher education, 
and now second term at CBO. We appreciate you being here, and 
the floor is yours for five minutes.

   STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE PHILLIP SWAGEL, DIRECTOR, THE 
                  CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

    Dr. Swagel. Thank you. Chairman Arrington, Ranking Member 
Boyle, Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to 
testify about the work of----
    Chairman Arrington. Dr. Swagel, turn that. Yeah, if you 
would. Thank you.
    Dr. Swagel. Will do. Thank you for inviting me to testify 
about the work of the Congressional Budget Office. We are here 
to support you, to support the Congress, and oversight is a key 
part of that, of making sure that we are supporting you as you 
need us to do.
    I will focus in my testimony on the accuracy of our deficit 
projection, but then I look forward to answering questions on 
any topic. So compared with our May 2022 projections we 
underestimated outlays for Fiscal Year 2023 by $564 billion, or 
nine percent, and we overestimated revenues by $477 billion, 
which is 11 percent. So together, that is the trillion-dollar 
miss, so to speak.
    This underestimate of the deficit was about four times 
greater than our average miss. So let me go through the largest 
factors affecting that accuracy, and the largest factors were 
actions taken by the Administration after our projections were 
made.
    So about $125 billion of the underestimate of outlays 
reflected student loans. So this is the cost of modifications, 
the income-driven repayment plan, and an extended pause in 
repayment and interest accrual. $60 billion on the outlay side 
was unusual outlays from the Federal Deposit Insurance 
Corporation, the FDIC, associated with the resolution of four 
bank failures. There was another $40 billion associated with 
those failures, so a total of $100 billion, but there is a 
sense in which the $40 billion was, you know, the normal way 
they respond to a bank failure and $60 billion was unusual. 
There is $170 billion of the outlay miss resulted from our 
estimates of net interest spending being too small, and this is 
on us, that our interest rate projections were too low.
    Then there are lots of other things. $50 billion was from 
other effects of our economic projections. For example, we 
underestimated Social Security outlays because our inflation 
estimate was too low, and then there is the Employee Retention 
Tax Credit, which affects both outlays and revenues.
    Now, the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation is 
responsible for estimates of tax policies, and when that 
legislation was put into effect, they estimated that the 
credit, the ERTC, would have budgetary effects in 2020, 2021, 
and 2022, but no effect in 2023. So in our May 2022 baseline, 
we had nothing for the ERTC. The costs of the ERTC in 2023 were 
large, over $100 billion between outlays and revenues, and it 
looks to continue into the current year.
    On the revenue side, there are actions taken by the 
Administration that totaled $120 billion that delayed tax 
revenues from 2023 into 2024. This is the delays in payments 
for people affected by disasters in California, for example, 
and then there are delays in the implementation of guidance for 
the minimum corporate tax.
    I mentioned already the ERTC on the revenue side, that was 
about $70 billion, and then $40 billion on the revenue side 
was, again, our interest rate projections, affecting our 
projections of remittances from the Fed.
    There is lots more, but the overall point is that some of 
the miss is our miss, our inflation forecast, our interest rate 
forecast, and some of it is actions taken after our projections 
were done that I think we reasonably could not have 
anticipated.
    Now, each month in our monthly budget review, we provide an 
update on how outlays and revenues compare with the amounts in 
the previous year, and so we regularly discuss how outcomes 
differ compared to, you know, to our projections.
    We will release new projections next Wednesday, and I will 
just mention a couple of things, that the deficit was going to 
be smaller because of the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the 
subsequent continuing resolutions. On the other hand, net 
interest costs are going to be higher, interest rates have gone 
up, and then the one that is relevant here is that the tax 
provisions from the 2022 reconciliation bill, those costs are 
going to be much higher than we had originally because the 
market has changed, the implementation is different than what 
the Joint Committee on Taxation expected. So that is just 
another example of administrative actions that affect our 
projections.
    So let me stop and say, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, I 
am happy to be here and to answer questions on any topic.
    [The information follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Arrington. Thank you, Dr. Swagel. We will now 
begin the Q&A session and I will yield myself five minutes for 
that.
    Okay, so I appreciate my Ranking Member making the comment 
about fiscal responsibility, and the culture of fiscal 
responsibility is ours, is our mantle to bear and our goal for 
the taxpayers of this great nation. I agree with that.
    What we are talking about with respect to culture is to 
say, what are the cultural challenges that CBO has or is 
reflected in the outcomes? Is there a culture of 
accountability? Is there a culture of welcoming criticism 
through transparency and peer review? Is there a culture of 
customer service where you are engaging the customers and 
stakeholders regularly and they feel heard?
    Your job is objectivity. It is a nonpartisan, accurate 
product of scoring or some other economic analysis, but input 
and engagement from the customer is important.
    So that is the culture, Dr. Swagel, we are talking about, 
and those are the questions I think you have to ask as the CEO 
of CBO and that is what we have to ask as your oversight 
authority.
    You know, if being a good guy and a smart guy were the only 
measures of success, you would be an A-plus, and if intentions 
were the measure of success for Congress, probably we would all 
be A-plus because I don't question the intentions of anybody in 
here, including Earl Blumenauer over there.
    I know I am, but it is true. I think the intentions 
generally are good. We have different views on how to allow our 
country to be on a path of progress and all that, but I think 
people generally want this country to succeed. We have 
different views of the role of government, for example.
    That is not the metric here. It is not intentions. It is 
not a good nature, and so I think it is incumbent upon us to 
say what other scoring entities exist? What other forecasting 
entities exist? What surveys of other forecasts, how are we 
doing relative to our peers? Not how do we think we are doing 
or how nice do we think we are, how smart are we? The blue chip 
group of economic projectors, the Federal Reserve, Penn 
Wharton, in my estimation, and we can go back and forth, get it 
more right than CBO gets it right, and we have data that I will 
submit for the record on that.
    Six years ago, there was three years of about three or four 
percent error rate from the projection to what was the actual 
deficit, just speaking about your projections on the deficit, 
but the last three years, it is been almost 25 percent in one 
year, 12 percent another, and then over 100 percent.
    So this business of everybody is just doing great, you 
know, Lake Wobegon, and we are all just rocking along as we 
should. First of all, it is not true about the Budget 
Committee. It is not true about my Republican Conference. It is 
not true about this institution or the Democrats, and it is not 
true about the CBO. So unless we are honest with each other and 
unless we use objective data to know if we are doing a good job 
or not and listening to the customer, hell, we don't know. We 
are just BS'ing ourselves and the American people.
    Gosh, Dr. Swagel, I have got so many things here. I guess I 
am just going to refer to one statement that you make in your 
written statement where you talk about, at the time of the 
forecast for the deficit, the forecasts are typically similar 
to those of other forecasters. That is not what I am seeing 
from the Federal Reserve, Penn Wharton, and others.
    For me, eight quarters, six out of eight in some 
categories, eight out of eight in others, were wrong on 
inflation, on interest rate, on GDP, and I am not even getting 
to the scoring piece of legislation and some of the concerns, 
and really, I would ask you to take the time to dig into the 
Chairmen of authorizing committees' letters and their 
sentiments and their specific examples of concerns.
    But then I flip over to the Survey of Professional 
Forecasters and you say that your forecast was at the lower end 
of the middle two-thirds range, and I am not even sure what--
two-thirds is a big swath and you are at the lower end. I don't 
know if that means you are at the lower quartile or not, but I 
think it does.
    So I am just going to end there with, if that is true and 
it is really the bottom quartile, that means we can do better. 
Can we all just agree we can do better? Okay. That is the 
framing and that is kind of the bottom line for me, and I will 
let the rest of my colleagues dig into the specifics.
    Again, Dr. Swagel, I appreciate it is a tough job. 
Predictions are tough to get right, but, man, we can do a whole 
lot better.
    With that, I yield to the Ranking Member for five minutes 
for his questions.
    Mr. Boyle. Well, thank you. Dr. Swagel, let me ask you 
about the CBO Data Sharing Act, which I alluded to in my 
opening statement, and for those who are interested and want to 
be supportive, H.R. 7032, and I am excited that we will be 
having a markup of this piece of legislation next week.
    Could you describe why it is CBO needs strong access to 
executive branch data? And perhaps you could give some examples 
of how delays in the past have impacted the work of CBO, 
ultimately impacting Congress, getting the data it needs and 
the projections it needs.
    Dr. Swagel. Thank you. Thank you for the bill, which will 
help us greatly in supporting you.
    CBO is basically people, computers, and data, and think of 
data as information, and we use a wide array of information. 
Sometimes an agency in the executive branch has information 
that we need, and they are the only place we can get it, that 
the public information is just not detailed enough. So we work 
with agencies on that. We have 20 data agreements in place, 
and, you know, we do lots of work.
    There are sometimes legal questions from agencies about 
their authority to provide us with information.
    Mr. Boyle. So even if they want to provide the information, 
they pull back because they are afraid that they might be 
somehow violating existing law.
    Dr. Swagel. That is right, and I will give you the 
examples. You had asked, for example, if I can give you one. So 
we have been doing work on the flood insurance program, and so 
we have some private sector data, but then we get information 
from FEMA, and FEMA has been very cooperative, but they have 
had concerns about their legal authority to provide us with 
information. We worked back and forth with them 
collaboratively. Your legislation would just solve that, would 
basically give FEMA the comfort that they are complying with 
the law without the kind of weeks of back and forth. So that is 
the sort of issue it would solve.
    It would require us to have very strong security on these 
data, including at least as good security and confidentiality 
protection as the agency that is providing us with the data.
    Mr. Boyle. I think I know the answer to this, but I do 
think there is value in making this explicit. How does CBO 
protect data? And would any of the changes in the piece of 
legislation that I have with the Chairman, the CBO Data Sharing 
Act, would anything in that bill impact CBO security practices?
    Dr. Swagel. If there is an impact, it would be to 
strengthen, but like I said, we follow the security protocols 
dictated by the agencies giving us the data, and so we have, 
you know, an array of different ways that we secure the data, 
you know, and then we have security precautions for the entire 
agency. So the legislation would require us to continue to do 
that, and we certainly would continue to do that.
    Mr. Boyle. Great, and then finally, just shifting gears, as 
you look, I referenced approximately 270 employees at the 
Congressional Budget Office, as you look at the 
responsibilities that Congress has placed on the Congressional 
Budget Office and the staff and budget that you have, how would 
you assess where you are right now in terms of having the 
resources you need to conduct your work?
    Dr. Swagel. So we have been shrinking since, really, since 
the December 2022 appropriations. We have not been filling 
vacancies, and it means I have vacancies in some key positions, 
like our Medicare Cost Estimates Unit, which is one of our 
busiest, the busiest parts, we lost someone and can't replace 
them. We have someone very senior who works on the 
appropriations, who is about to leave for a great opportunity; 
I can't replace him, and on.
    On the national security side, we have lost one and we are 
about to lose another, and it seems like the NDAA is now, like, 
there is no offseason on the NDAA for the amendment process.
    So these are things, I mean, if I had the budget, I would 
immediately hire in these areas and more, and it is really just 
to support you. I mean, we want to be responsive, and I am 
worried that I don't have the resources to be responsive.
    Mr. Boyle. Well, thank you again, Dr. Swagel, and lastly, 
let me say, I know we talked about this last week, but tomorrow 
is the last day in a two-decade congressional career of my 
friend, the gentleman from Buffalo, Mr. Higgins. So, Brian, I 
think I can say in a bipartisan way, we will all miss you, my 
friend.
    And I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. Well, let me say I associate myself 
with your comments about Mr. Higgins, and I have to put up with 
him, not only on this Committee, but on Ways and Means, but I 
am glad to put up with him. He is a good guy, and he will be 
missed. So we appreciate you, my friend.
    With that, thank you, Mr. Boyle. I will yield five minutes 
to the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Glenn Grothman.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you. First of all, Director Swagel, I 
would like to thank you for being here again. You guys always 
work so hard, and it is good you are able to spend today with 
us.
    Can you give us kind of an overview of the steps you have 
taken to increase transparency at CBO since you took over?
    Dr. Swagel. Yes, I will give you a couple of steps that I 
have taken, and my predecessor also did a lot, so I have 
continued what he did.
    Some of it is, of course, meeting with you, testifying. We 
publish reports that provide background on our cost estimates. 
You know, for example, our cost estimate of drug negotiation, 
we have published several reports providing the technical 
underpinnings of that. We publish reports comparing ourselves 
with other forecasters. We actually publish computer code as 
well on GitHub, so people can go in and see what we are doing.
    And then we request information. As one other example, a 
recent one, is we had a blog post on these anti-obesity 
medications, it was like Ozempic and that kind of medication, 
asking for input to help us understand the budgetary 
consequences, including the health and scientific consequences, 
and we have had a tremendous amount of input from the private 
sector.
    Mr. Grothman. Okay. In April, you released a report 
describing your creation of cost estimates. It stated, ``CBO is 
currently developing a plan to make more of the account level 
analysis of appropriation bills publicly available in 
accessible formats.'' Can you give me an update as far as how 
is that going?
    Dr. Swagel. Can you say that last part?
    Mr. Grothman. Okay. You stated in an April report, ``CBO is 
currently developing a plan to make more of the account level 
analysis of appropriation bills----
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah.
    Mr. Grothman [continuing]. Publicly available.'' Can you 
tell us how that plan is going?
    Dr. Swagel. Oh, no, very good. Okay. So, no, thank you, and 
I know it is important to you on the appropriation side.
    So we have put on our website now, there is a tab on the 
cost estimate section that is for appropriations bills. You 
know, most of our cost estimates are for authorizing committees 
and authorizing bills, but we do put out cost estimates on 
appropriations. So we now have a tab that collects all of that.
    So we have been moving in that direction. There are other 
things we could be doing in that and I know you are interested 
in thinking about what more we can be doing.
    Mr. Grothman. Okay. There is a loophole in section 402 of 
the Budget Act that carves out bills reported by the House or 
Senate Appropriations Committee from the requirement that you 
guys prepare cost estimates. Do you feel that provision 
prohibits you from providing account level analysis of 
appropriation bills?
    Dr. Swagel. No, it doesn't.
    Mr. Grothman. Okay.
    Dr. Swagel. So we have the ability and authority to provide 
the account level information.
    Mr. Grothman. You can. Is there any capacity restraint that 
would prevent you from publicly releasing account level 
analysis of those bills?
    Dr. Swagel. It is. That is really the barrier, is our 
capacity. You know, our appropriations team, well, especially 
this year with what has happened with appropriations, has been 
pretty much nonstop, and so we would want to work, you know, 
with the Budget Committee, work with the appropriators to say, 
well, what--you know, in a sense what can we do that suits 
your, you know, your needs?
    Mr. Grothman. But you could release the stuff anyway.
    Dr. Swagel. Absolutely.
    Mr. Grothman. Okay. Later this week, I will introduce 
legislation to provide an exemption from the Privacy Act. Can 
you discuss the current restrictions placed on the CBO by the 
Privacy Act in 1974 and how it hinders your ability to produce, 
or does it hinder your ability to produce accurate and timely 
cost estimates?
    Dr. Swagel. So it is such a similar question to what, in 
some ways, to what I answered with Mr. Boyle, that we think we 
have the authority to get information from executive agencies. 
They will sometimes point to the Privacy Act and say, well, 
even though the Budget Act says you can get it, the Privacy Act 
says maybe not, and so the GAO has more authority.
    Mr. Grothman. So if we had a statutory change to make it 
clear, right?
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah. So that is legislation that we would 
certainly appreciate.
    Mr. Grothman. Okay. Can you describe the amount of time it 
takes--or how much time CBO currently spends negotiating with 
agencies to gain access to data that is covered by the Privacy 
Act? Is that a time-consuming thing for you guys?
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah, that is a good question. I would like to 
get back to you on the details of the Privacy Act. I will tell 
you on negotiating with agencies in general, I mentioned FEMA. 
The Social Security Administration, we have three data 
agreements with them. One has expired and we have been working 
with them for a year now to try to get it renewed. They keep 
extending our access, so it hasn't been a problem, but it is 
the kind of thing, it is like a year of sort of our general 
counsel's time has been, you know, I think, chewed up is the 
right word, trying to nail this down.
    So these sort of data access provisions will be very 
helpful.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you again for testifying.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin. I 
yield five minutes now to our friend Mr. Higgins from New York.
    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Swagel, the new Federal fiscal year begins October 1 of 
each year, and there is a process whereby Federal agencies will 
submit requests to the Office of Budget Management, which we 
will use as a basis from which the President will make in 
advance a budget proposal to Congress, and then Congress begins 
its deliberations, passes a resolution in both the House and 
the Senate. Those budgets are reconciled toward the goal of 
trying to make a budget before or on October 1 of each and 
every year.
    There are 12 appropriations bills. How many of those 12 
appropriations bills have been enacted in Congress for the 
fiscal year beginning October 1 of last year?
    Dr. Swagel. None so far.
    Mr. Higgins. Okay. How frequent an occurrence is that?
    Dr. Swagel. It has been a long time since those bills were 
enacted on schedule with the Budget Act.
    Mr. Higgins. Yeah. So in 2023, the Federal budget was $6.1 
trillion. It is approximately 24 percent of the entire U.S. 
economy. Do you believe that the American economy does not 
perform well when there is uncertainty and instability?
    Dr. Swagel. That is right. Uncertainty and instability has 
a drag on our economy.
    Mr. Higgins. Okay. So the Federal budget each and every 
year, which doesn't get passed by Congress, it is really one of 
two major functions that Congress has. One is budget and the 
other is oversight. Would you agree with that?
    Dr. Swagel. I would agree.
    Mr. Higgins. All right. So you can't recall the last time 
there was a budget that was enacted by Congress at the 
beginning of the fiscal year on October 5th--or 1st, which 
included all the appropriations bills approved, which are 
necessary to have a budget. Otherwise, you don't have a budget.
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah, I don't know the last time that happened.
    Mr. Higgins. Okay. Well, here is my point. You know, people 
beat up pretty good on the Federal Government, and people 
should be reminded that the Federal Government is part of a 
public-private partnership, and, you know, look at defense 
research appropriations, DARPA, for example. Every technology 
in everybody's smartphone here came from research that was 
financed by the Federal Government: touchscreen technology, 
voice-activated personal assistant, global positioning 
satellite, and the Internet.
    The same is true for drug development. Drug companies 
won't, you know, do risky research because on the front end the 
basic science of drug development is not profitable. It is all 
cost, and then the drug companies pick it up and they pay for 
it.
    I just want to make the point that the Federal Government 
is 24 percent of the U.S. economy, and a Congress that is 
responsible for developing a budget fails in that 
responsibility every single year.
    Additionally, the United States is five percent of the 
world's population and five percent--or 25 percent of the 
world's economy. So not only does Congress' inability to make a 
budget fully with approved appropriations bills virtually every 
single year, not only does it hurt the American economy, as the 
world's largest economy, it hurts the world economy as well. 
Would you care to comment on that?
    Dr. Swagel. No, I agree with you that, you know, the kinds 
of instability and uncertainty that you pointed to in the U.S. 
economy has an effect on the rest of the world, and the 
economic prospects overseas affect us as well. So I agree with 
what you said.
    Mr. Higgins. Has that been quantified ever as a basis to 
admonish Congress to do a better job?
    Dr. Swagel. I haven't seen that, but I wouldn't be 
surprised if someone has quantified that effect.
    Mr. Higgins. So it is conceivable that it could be 
quantified?
    Dr. Swagel. It could be quantified.
    Mr. Higgins. I think that that would be a great public 
service the Congressional Budget Office could provide to the 
United States Congress so as to admonish them to just do 
basically what Congress was put in place to do.
    With that, I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I would share with Mr. Higgins, I love 
his line of questioning. The Fitch and Moody's have quantified 
it. They have said that our lack of governing, our inability to 
come up with long-term solutions because of the dysfunction of 
our institution is a reason they have downgraded, which comes 
at a cost. So that is just one measure, but I appreciate your 
line of questioning.
    Now, for five minutes, our friend from Pennsylvania, Lloyd 
Smucker.
    Mr. Smucker. Thank you, Dr. Swagel, good to see you.
    Let me start by recognizing the importance of the work of 
CBO to inform our decisions that we are making for policy and 
for legislation, and I appreciate the work that CBO does.
    I also appreciate you have made yourself available, your 
staff available to me multiple times on a variety of topics, 
and I appreciate that as well.
    I think one of the things I would like to drill down on 
just a little is this $1 trillion miss, because the work of CBO 
is important. We rely on CBO, and I think, I mean, wouldn't you 
agree a trillion dollar miss can reduce our confidence in CBO's 
projections?
    Dr. Swagel. I agree. It was an extraordinarily large miss.
    Mr. Smucker. Yeah, and your projections really do have an 
impact on how we are thinking about legislation and so on. So 
this is important to understand what happened here.
    I appreciate as well, you provided an explanation. It looks 
like about roughly one-third was due to actions taken by the 
Administration after you did your projection, right? Roughly 
one-third.
    Dr. Swagel. That is right.
    Mr. Smucker. About 300-some. So is that unusual?
    Dr. Swagel. I mean, it was an unusually large miss.
    Mr. Smucker. But I am saying, is it unusual for the 
Administration to take actions that are not authorized 
essentially by Congress?
    Dr. Swagel. It was unusual from our perspective----
    Mr. Smucker. Yes.
    Dr. Swagel [continuing]. And, you know, we are trying to 
track it----
    Mr. Smucker. These were actions that you could not have 
been aware of, correct?
    Dr. Swagel. That is correct.
    Mr. Smucker. Because they were done unilaterally by the 
Administration outside of the authority of Congress.
    Dr. Swagel. That is right.
    Mr. Smucker. I think it is important we get that on the 
record. This was extraordinary activity by the President in 
spending what we would allege were--he was unauthorized to do 
so and this was outside of his authority. So that is number 
one.
    And then number two, I think about a third of the 
projections where you just simply missed the economic 
projections.
    Dr. Swagel. That is right.
    Mr. Smucker. Why? Why would you have missed--I mean, again, 
that is a big miss. So can you tell us why you would have 
missed that in this particular time?
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah. So there are two pieces to it, and I will 
talk about inflation, but the same thing applies to interest 
rates, and there, what you said, it is just a miss and it 
affects the, you know, revenues and outlays.
    The economy was changing rapidly at the beginning of 2022 
when we were doing our forecast, and our process is that we 
have to do the economics before we do the budget. You know, the 
analyst for unemployment insurance, she has to know what is the 
unemployment rate going to be seven years from now. So we have 
to do the forecast early.
    And when the economy is changing quickly, as it was in 
early 2022, even two months, you know, doing a forecast two 
months early--so there is a mix of those documents.
    Mr. Smucker. I wish we had more time, but I don't. I want 
to go back to something the Chairman said. It does appear that 
other organizations, like Penn Wharton, were closer and perhaps 
have been closer in previous years as well on their economic 
projections. Do you track that?
    Dr. Swagel. We do. So we make comparisons to others, 
including Penn Wharton.
    Mr. Smucker. Can you provide us with your comparisons on 
the number of organizations? I don't know the answer to this. I 
would be interested in knowing how you have done over the past 
few years compared to some of the other organizations, just 
share that with the Committee.
    Dr. Swagel. We will do that.
    Mr. Smucker. When you look at that and you find if they are 
more accurate, I don't know if you would agree if they are or 
not, do you look at your own model? Because obviously, every 
organization is using different models. Do you think your model 
is still the best model after missing it by a trillion?
    Dr. Swagel. So, we do. We go back and look when we miss, 
and on the inflation side, we went back and looked at, well, 
why did we miss and what did we miss? And our subsequent 
inflation forecasts have been much--I mean, not just much 
better, like really much better. They are really spot-on as 
inflation has come down over time. So we do go back and try to 
figure out what do we need to improve.
    Mr. Smucker. Yeah. Have you made changes to your model 
after this year's $1 trillion difference?
    Dr. Swagel. You know, this was a portfolio of models. We 
have made changes to--on the macro side, on the inflation side, 
again, in particular, where the miss was the biggest, we have 
made changes. We thought much more carefully about how the 
economy is changing as on the supply side, the labor supply, 
supply chain disruptions, other things.
    Mr. Smucker. Again, I do appreciate your work. I have been 
asking some pointed questions. I just think it is really, 
really important that we all can continue to have confidence. 
So we appreciate your answers to these questions. Thank you.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
and yield to our friend, the gentlelady, Ms. Schakowsky from 
Illinois, for five minutes.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you. First, let me just say to my 
friend and colleague Brian Higgins that I will definitely miss 
sitting next to you and hearing the wisdom that you bring to 
this Committee. We will all miss that.
    So very recently, this Committee marked up a bill to create 
a fiscal commission. I was on a fiscal commission, the Simpson-
Bowles Commission in 2012, and I have to tell you, as a 
consequence of that experience, I strongly objected to the idea 
of creating a fiscal commission, believing that the Members of 
Congress are fully capable of coming up with budget decisions, 
and because they seem to focus on things like cutting Social 
Security and other benefit programs.
    So what I am interested in is what is the cost of a fiscal 
commission? This is not free, and I am wondering, in addition 
to having Members of Congress working on this, how much would a 
fiscal commission cost? What is your estimate?
    Dr. Swagel. So our estimate of the cost of the legislation 
was $12 million in discretionary spending, some for the 
operation of the commission and then much of it for the public 
outreach campaign that was part of the legislation.
    Ms. Schakowsky. And, you know, what is your view in terms 
of what it would cost? What kind of requirements would be made 
of you that would be of additional work if there were a fiscal 
commission?
    Dr. Swagel. Well, so we would support the Congress and the 
commission. You know, depending on what else is happening, what 
other legislation we are working on, it could challenge us.
    I mentioned some of the vacancies we have on the macro 
side. On our macroeconomic team we have vacancies as well; on 
our Social Security team. So I would want to make sure we had 
the resources really to support the commission wherever it 
went.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Okay. Well, I think we should relieve you 
of that and just take care of it ourselves. Anyway, let me ask 
you about another issue.
    I am very concerned about income inequality in the United 
States, and Republicans have long claimed that cutting 
corporate taxes somehow is going to pay for itself. This has 
never really happened. We saw during the Trump Administration a 
large tax--what I feel like is a tax giveaway to the wealthiest 
Americans.
    I am just wondering, what was the cost of that Trump tax 
cut when he was President?
    Dr. Swagel. So, you know, we put out a cost estimate at the 
time. It was before my time as Director, so I don't have the 
number in my head. We did an analysis, I will answer the 
question in this way, we did an analysis of the effects of it, 
and we said there would be economic effects on investment and 
some rent.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Well, my understanding was that there was 
an estimate that there was $1.1 trillion over ten years would 
be the cost.
    Dr. Swagel. That sounds right.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Yeah, which is a heck of a lot of money.
    What I really would want to comment on your thoughts about 
the legislation that we are going to vote on today and on the 
tax cut, and what we see is that for the Child Tax Credit, that 
there would be $33 billion for the Child Tax Credit, but $177 
billion for the corporate tax cut, and we know that some of the 
companies, some of the companies, like Meta and Netflix and 
General Motors, would actually have tax refunds as a 
consequence.
    I feel that that is inequitable, and I wanted to have your 
comments on what you think the impact will be.
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. So we haven't analyzed the specific tax 
bill that will be voted on today just because that is, the 
Joint Committee on Taxation has done that. We will, though. 
Every year we do a report on income inequality, looking at the 
tax system.
    So in the future, we will go back and look at the effect of 
how the tax system has changed and what that means for 
inequality, including the effect of the Child Tax Credit in 
narrowing inequality. So we will get that. I just won't have 
that until after the fact.
    Ms. Schakowsky. I look forward to seeing your conclusions. 
Thank you.
    And I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentlelady from Illinois 
and yield five minutes to our good friend General Jack Bergman, 
who is the Chair of our Oversight Task Force.
    Mr. Bergman, for five minutes.
    Mr. Bergman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 
Doctor, for being here.
    There is a current country song by Bailey Zimmerman, the 
title is, ``Between a Rock and a Hard Place,'' and the first 
lyrics are, ``We have been swinging and missing, it ain't broke 
yet, but it damn sure needs fixing.''
    We could probably apply that, but I would suggest to you, 
unlike the song, we are pretty broken right now in a few 
different areas. I am going to focus my comments because as a 
Member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, I want to 
discuss the CBO scoring of the VA-related bills in relation to 
the Toxic Exposure Fund, TEF.
    In short, the PACT Act allowed VA to use TEF for a wide 
variety of services for veterans exposed to toxins, shifting 
some traditionally discretionary costs, like health care, to 
mandatory spending. As a result, the CBO developed a rule of 
thumb scoring all veterans legislation, classifying a 
percentage of total discretionary costs as mandatory costs to 
any authorizing legislation which would affect one of nine VA 
appropriations accounts. I know this is getting a little 
technical here, but some of this you may have to take for the 
record if you don't have it, but I will stay with the big 
picture.
    The mandatory spending portion is currently 24 percent of 
the total authorizing legislation cost, and it is projected to 
increase to 42 percent by Fiscal Year 2032. This decision by 
CBO has forced the VA Committee to find offsets to advance even 
the most basic bills, including several that I have introduced 
and has greatly hindered our work in Committee to improve the 
lives of veterans and their families.
    While I understand the statutory requirements for CBO under 
the PACT Act, it is essential that toxic exposure fund-related 
scoring by CBO is accurate and based on actual data.
    So my main question here is when, if ever--because you are 
kind of between a rock and a hard place here. It is kind of 
like you designed, or you got involved with the FAA in figuring 
out how airplanes should work, but yet you never built them and 
you never fly them. So you are kind of somewhere out there 
because you got to make sure of the safety of everything that 
works.
    When, if ever, will the CBO be able to dispense with its 
rule of thumb to assign a certain percentage of total cost as a 
mandatory cost for all affected legislation?
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. No, thank you, and everything you 
described is the way we do it. So when we looked at the TEF, 
we, you know, talked to the VA about how they would implement, 
you know, as best they could tell us, and the rule of thumb was 
developed based on that and based on the data on the Gulf----
    Mr. Bergman. Yeah, I want to--because you could go on this 
and the rest of my time would be gone in a heartbeat, but the 
point is----
    Dr. Swagel. Yep.
    Mr. Bergman [continuing]. You know it. Did the Congress not 
get the wording right in the legislation? Because we are 
looking in the mirror here, and we could have done better 
because what the House did was good wording, but we ended up 
taking the Senate wording in the end game, and it created that 
loophole, or that created that uniquely soft area that puts us 
all between a rock and the hard place. I am not trying to lay 
blame on the Senate, but I think the House should have pushed 
back, and we have a chance to rectify this in the future. Is 
that fair?
    Dr. Swagel. That is fair, and we are ready to work with you 
and with the Committee to think about different legislative 
approaches to get out of the rock and hard place.
    Mr. Bergman. Because this is on us as the Congress, the 
House and Senate together working on this.
    Oh, by the way, as an aside, in the last 30 seconds, the 
$12 million price tag for the fiscal commission, billboards and 
all that, I mean, where did that come from?
    Dr. Swagel. Oh, so we looked at past commissions that had a 
mandate to do public----
    Mr. Bergman. Well, do we have to do billboards just 
because, I mean, now we do digital as opposed to analog?
    Dr. Swagel. Right. So we--yeah.
    Mr. Bergman. That was an attempt at humor. I know my time 
has run out. Yeah.
    Dr. Swagel. But this is our process. If there is something 
new, we say, well, what is an analog to it in the past? And so 
that is where the figure comes.
    Mr. Bergman. Okay. So we are going to all help ourselves, 
whether it be here in the House under the Chairman's leadership 
here on Budget or use the CBO and definitely our friends over 
on the north side of the Capitol to do better and be more 
detailed in our guidance.
    With that, I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the Chairman, General Bergman. 
I now yield five minutes to our friend from Portland, Earl 
Blumenauer.
    Mr. Blumenauer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate 
your being here Doctor.
    We take a step back and think about the complexity that you 
face. You have to operate under assumptions about how Congress 
operates. Very difficult. We have had conversations with your 
predecessors about how Congress could do a better job of 
present value accounting without going over the edge in terms 
of dynamic scoring, but that is the reality that you face and 
the horizons that you have to deal with in terms of the 
interaction between the two bodies.
    The extraordinary set of circumstances that we face, I can 
see you being off a trillion dollars. We were on a roller 
coaster three years ago in terms of the projections about how 
bad the economy was going to be, and there are some people on 
the other side of the aisle who had some pretty apocalyptic 
projections, and in the popular media. We keep talking about 
uncharted territory, and you were attempting to work that.
    But what has happened in the course of the last 18 months? 
We have seen the historic investments paying off. The GDP 
growth for the first three years of the Biden Administration is 
3.4 percent, outpacing the first three years of the prior 
administration. Inflation, which we were deeply concerned 
about, is now down to between two and three percent, very close 
to the Fed's target rate. We have almost three million jobs 
created last year. Unemployment is at a historic low, 3.5 
percent. I think it has been below four percent for 23 
consecutive months.
    The work that we did, some of it was bipartisan, a lot of 
it was part of the work we did with the Administration on 
things that were modestly controversial, but they appear to 
have been working. The landscape that you have now going 
forward appears to me to be much less uncertain than the 
historic efforts that we faced in the aftermath of the 
pandemic.
    So I am less concerned about attacking your modeling. I 
know you are 270 people. I mean, this is the smallest of the 
agencies, and you are doing a lot in uncertain areas.
    I am wondering if, based on the success of policies 
recently, if that raises your confidence level in terms of the 
projections that are on the table now looking forward?
    Dr. Swagel. It does, and the lower inflation gives us much 
more confidence that we have got it better and that our 
projections on inflation are more on target than what we had 
that I talked about in my testimony, and that affects revenues, 
it affects outlays.
    Mr. Blumenauer. Mr. Chairman, I just feel that we may have 
different opinions about the efficacy of policies, but I think 
they are working. I think the empirical evidence that CBO and 
other outside experts are looking at that this is really 
extraordinary growth. We are doing better than any other major 
economy and the minor economies as well.
    So it seems to me that it is important for us to focus on 
the big picture. We ought to focus on being able to help the 
CBO be able to have the resources to meet our needs and that we 
need to have realistic expectations coming off the roller 
coaster that we have been on.
    A number of us have been through these challenges before. 
We have watched hits and misses, but I think we are in a 
trajectory now where we can have much greater certainty. Rather 
than sort of challenging the CBO, the assumptions, I would like 
to work to strengthen the agency to be able to focus on ways 
that they can meet our needs and that we can have more 
realistic expectations for this impossible job that will never 
be done with complete accuracy in terms of projection.
    But we have got an agency that is doing a good job. We have 
seen the success of policies in place, and I think we ought to 
build on this degree of stability to be able to help CBO help 
us, and then we do our job, like collecting taxes that are owed 
and looking at areas of reform that we can agree on, which I 
think there is real potential for our moving forward.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman, and since you 
referenced me, I would just say realistic expectations is a 
good thing for us to keep in mind, and I appreciate that. It is 
complex and difficult.
    Constructive criticism, continual improvement, and 
expectation, that we look at benchmarks and make sure that we 
are best in class and committed to excellence is also essential 
for our customers back home, but I appreciate Mr. Blumenauer, 
as he knows.
    I am going to yield five minutes to one of my best buddies 
who is also leaving this great and yet dysfunctional 
institution, Drew Ferguson.
    Mr. Ferguson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director Swagel, 
first question to you. How does it feel to wake up every day, 
go to work and feel like you are shooting rubber bands at the 
moon?
    Dr. Swagel. I am here to support you. So that is my----
    Mr. Ferguson. Well, we do it, too. My point is, you shoot 
rubber bands at the moon every single day, year-in and year-
out, and you don't hit the target. You don't hit the target. So 
let's go back.
    And when I say ``you,'' listen, I profoundly respect you. I 
think you are a smart guy. I think you are an honest guy. So 
when I say you, I could say y'all, I mean the entire CBO 
operation, past and present.
    If you go back, let's pick a number, 20 years, 25 years. 
Every time you give us a 10-year score, from that date forward 
to the 10-year mark, what is your accuracy? How accurate are 
you on day one when you tell us a program is going to cost $5 
billion or $12 billion and you get to year ten, what is your 
hit and miss rate?
    Dr. Swagel. You know----
    Mr. Ferguson. What is your hit and miss rate?
    Dr. Swagel. You know, it varies so much. Yeah, I can't give 
you an overall because I can give you some quick examples on, 
like, where we got it wrong, where we got it right, but it 
varies so much.
    Mr. Ferguson. No, no, no, no, no. What I am looking for is 
that I want this body to understand, and we all want to 
understand, the predictability that our friend from Oregon 
talked about, if you are going to give us a 10-year number, 
okay, and then we go out ten years and we are not even in the 
ballpark, we are half of that number, we are not making really 
sound decisions because the accuracy is so far off at the 10-
year mark. I don't think that is a function of you not being 
able to do your job. I think that is a function of a really bad 
system. Static scoring.
    Why in the world are we not using dynamic scoring? Okay. 
Why in the world are we--I mean, a question that I am going to 
submit to you in writing that I would like for you to answer is 
to look at every 10-year window that you give us on a score and 
then look at the accuracy rate at that 10-year mark. Okay? All 
right. Now that is number one.
    Number two, because you are off--and again, when I say 
``you,'' I am talking about CBO, and CBO is off consistently, 
and I was on the Budget Committee in 2017, and I have kind of 
gone back and looked at what they said was going to happen in 
2017, and here we are coming up on eight years later, and we 
ain't even close. Okay? We are not even in the ballpark of it. 
All right.
    So we should be doing--do you think that the quarterly 
audits of your numbers, where they are, and some suggestions 
about how to make that better on a quarterly basis would be 
helpful?
    Dr. Swagel. It is something I have been thinking about. So 
every month we put out the monthly budget review that provides 
information against the last year. You are thinking from this 
bigger picture, you know, not like program by program, but the 
big picture is something I have committed to the Chair to, to 
think about how we can provide you with more information that 
you don't need to ask us, that we just push the information to 
you.
    Mr. Ferguson. Okay, all right. That is good. All right. 
More information is helpful.
    One of the challenges is that every time you all are wrong, 
which has been damn near every quarter that I have been up 
here, okay, every quarter you are wrong. You always say why you 
are wrong to some degree. You know, it is a little opaque. All 
right? Sometimes you make that clear as mud, but you never come 
back with a solution about how to fix that problem, and CBO 
hasn't offered meaningful solutions to us to consider, and if 
you are not going to do that, then maybe we are going to 
suggest those to you.
    This is an absolute--if you think about where we are, since 
1974, we got so many good men and women on both sides of the 
aisle that have run with the promise of getting our fiscal 
house in order, okay, to make sure we can take care of our most 
vulnerable, defend this nation, do all the things that we want 
to do as a great nation, and we are consistently off, 
consistently way off, and the result is trillions of dollars in 
debt, 36, 37 trillion now.
    We are not making real smart decisions because I don't 
think our information is really good because you are operating 
by rules that don't lead to where we need to be. It just begs 
the question, we are doing the same thing over and over again, 
and we are getting the absolutely same horrible results over 
and over again from the Congressional Budget Office.
    Mr. Chairman, I know my time is about to expire. Again, 
Director Swagel, I am not trying to attack you directly. I am 
trying to attack a process that is badly broken, and I look 
forward to Congress maybe making suggested--not suggested, 
telling how we are going to reform this and do this the right 
way.
    I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I couldn't associate myself more with 
those comments, especially your conclusion.
    Before we lose our friend, Mr. Higgins, for the last time, 
I got a YETI cooler here. The guys that created YETI coolers 
are graduates of Texas Tech University, my alma mater. So it 
says, Budget Committee. And we appreciate--this is the best 
your Budget Committee colleagues could come up with was a YETI 
Cooler mug, and then I am going to give you, as your friend, a 
Food, Fuel, and Fiber shirt. That is on behalf of the people 
from God's country in West Texas.
    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Arrington. Y'all give it up for Brian, please.
    Scott Peters, our friend from San Diego, five minutes.
    Mr. Peters. Brian, you tell us if that Texas Tech mug holds 
water.
    Director, thanks so much. You are an understated guy. I 
could be an understated guy, and I just want to call out what 
you said, which is you are not able to get people to fill these 
jobs. We depend so heavily on CBO. It is the sort of guideposts 
we use to have a common set of facts about what things cost. 
What do you need to have the capacity to solve these problems 
before we even talk about what the techniques or approaches 
would be?
    Dr. Swagel. So we are shrinking down under 270. I think I 
need about 285 people to really serve the Congress the way the 
Congress works now. If we had reconciliation every year, I 
would need more.
    Mr. Peters. I got that.
    Dr. Swagel. But 285 in a kind of normal--I don't know what 
normal is, but, you know----
    Mr. Peters. Do you have the money for that or is it an 
issue of you can't find people to take the jobs?
    Dr. Swagel. No, our budget, you know, since December 2022 
has, you know, been much lower than keeping up with inflation, 
and we are 90 percent people. You know, that is our cost.
    Mr. Peters. So you need money.
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah. The only thing I can do to fit our 
budget----
    Mr. Peters. For 15 positions.
    Dr. Swagel [continuing]. Is shed people.
    Mr. Peters. Okay, I just offer to the Chair, maybe we ought 
to think about supporting that. This is sort of the backbone 
of--it is not a big expenditure, and, you know, we have to have 
people who have the capacity to do this work even before we 
talk about critiquing the work itself.
    I also wanted to just thank you for meeting last year with 
researchers for Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego to 
discuss California's Baby Bear Project and how its findings 
might help inform your analysts' scoring assumptions.
    For those who don't know, Project Baby Bear used whole 
genome sequencing to diagnose a statistical sampling of our 
state's sickest infants. Over the course of the study, they 
found that immediately sequencing and diagnosing these babies 
prevented 513 unnecessary days in the hospital, 11 unnecessary 
major surgeries, and 16 invasive diagnostic tests. Even one day 
with your child in a neonatal intensive care unit can cost 
thousands of dollars, and early sequencing gave those families 
answers and saved an average of nearly $4,300 per patient by 
the time they left the hospital. Don't even think about lost 
earnings or all the other treatment that was avoided by that 
early detection.
    Now, that brings up the issue with the Federal Government 
scoring, because when we talk about things like screening and 
prevention, infrastructure, education, buying fuel for the 
military, we only talk about the impact of the budget this 
year, and we don't really account for the future benefits of 
that saving. So, you know, that is something no family would 
do. You wouldn't say, I can save $10,000 on fixing the roof 
this year, knowing that when the storm comes through, you spend 
$30,000 on replacing your furniture next year. I mean, we have 
to figure out a way to handle that.
    So I wonder, how do you propose we get a better job? How 
would you propose we would get a better job of accounting for 
the returns we get on the Federal investments that we make so 
we really are accurate about what things really cost over time?
    Dr. Swagel. No, thank you, and I have heard that from you 
and many of your colleagues, that we need to provide you with 
information beyond the 10-year window for exactly what you 
said. You know, you help a child at age two, well, at age 22, 
they will have higher earnings, they will pay taxes, and that 
applies to many things.
    So we are working on that for the budget, you know, the 
sort of budget enforcement mechanisms, those are generally 
within the 10-year window. So that is, you know, our 
requirement, but we are working hard to figure out ways to 
provide you with that information over the 10-year window and 
out. This is as far as useful to you.
    Mr. Peters. Just so maybe flesh out a little bit, because 
we have been talking about this for a long time. How do you 
propose we--what do you think those tools are going to look 
like? Can you preview that for us?
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah. I will tell you some of the challenges. 
You know, one is just a dollar in year 22 is different than a 
dollar in year two, and so providing information not just in 
nominal dollars, but in net present value, so that's one, and 
finding a way, you know, that you don't need a finance Ph.D. to 
kind of understand what is going on. So that is one thing we 
are working on.
    Another one is the comprehensiveness. So there will be 
benefits, you know, improve a child's life. They pay taxes, but 
they are also going to draw on some benefits, whether health 
subsidies or other things, and try to get all of those pieces 
at all of the stages of their life. That is the kind of thing 
that is a challenge, but that we are working on.
    Mr. Peters. Maybe with your predecessor and you I talked 
about only tobacco was the only thing that had enough evidence 
to actually nail down future benefits, avoiding tobacco. I 
would suggest, you know, we have a lot of evidence that may not 
be as extensive as that, but you could give us some benefit, 
you could discount it by 75 or by 50 percent for uncertainty. 
At least give us a chance to talk about things in a way that is 
realistic, in the way that, you know, businesses and families 
do all the time.
    Mr. Chairman, I have exceeded my time. Appreciate the 
hearing and I yield back.
    Dr. Swagel. Mr. Chairman, can I mention the two things that 
we are working on that I think are of general interest? One is 
obesity or anti-obesity, which has that, you know, long run 
property. A second is hepatitis C, which also has that same, 
you know, you help someone today, their life is better for 20 
years, and so we are working hard on that, and I will come back 
to you when we have more on that.
    Chairman Arrington. Great points about the timeframe and 
how we measure the time horizon of benefits and ROI, and I 
think that is a really good topic. We could spend a whole 
hearing on, and we probably--these are things we are going to 
come back to, Dr. Swagel, for more of a deep dive.
    With that, five minutes to our friend from Utah, Mr. Blake 
Moore.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you, Chairman, and to continue on that 
point, we could do a whole hearing on health care and those 
long-term factors, and it relates to what I wanted to talk 
about, but, Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing on 
oversight. Regardless of who is in the Administration, 
regardless of whatever Congress' majority or minority, we 
cannot be scared, we cannot be afraid to do our oversight 
responsibility. We don't exist as a separation of power, the 
congressional branch, the congressional side of this, if we are 
unwilling to do that on the legislative side.
    To the Ranking Member, thank you for always keeping the 
time on your remarks. Appreciate that, but I also appreciate 
your mentioning, you know, Democrats, if it is favorable, will 
highlight the CBO. They will blast it on the other side, and 
Republicans will do the same thing, and we have got to be able 
to get away from that. We have to look at it.
    That, ultimately, does go back to the CBO and your 
responsibility, Director, that accuracy, and getting to that 
point where you have got accurate data that can extend over 
several years and looking forward, if we can have accuracy, 
then we will take more of a responsibility. I will commit to it 
to make sure that we are delivering that, and even in our 
rhetoric and our tone, that we have got to look at a score, 
regardless if it is a Republican- or Democratic-led bill, and 
recognize, okay, that is going to be accurate. So that has to 
exist back here. We cannot get ourselves in fiscal order if 
that doesn't exist.
    The point I wanted to make is that net interest spending--
so the numbers I have here, $217 billion in 2023, it was 
several hundred billion dollars higher than the CBO's May 2022 
baseline projection. These are significant increases and 
extremely hard to predict going forward.
    It is my biggest concern. It is what keeps me up at night 
knowing that when my kids have their first job and they just 
graduated from their, you know, education program, whatever 
they are going to be doing, that they are going to have 40 
cents on the dollar of whatever Federal revenues are, it is 
just going to be our net interest. That is the part that keeps 
me up at night.
    Director Swagel, a lot of legislation proposals that are 
introduced have--the significant long-term costs would be much 
larger if interest on the debt was factored in. Can you give us 
some perspective on the authority or ability at this moment to 
be able to project net interest costs associated with this 
scored legislation? Does CBO need an act of Congress to be able 
to make this more a part of the factor?
    Because as our net interest increases by hundreds of 
billions of dollars year over year, every time you score, even 
if it is a small bill, will have a much more significant impact 
than it did in the previous decades, and that has to be 
something that we take into consideration. Can CBO enhance 
their efforts on this?
    Dr. Swagel. No, you have got it exactly right that more 
debt, higher rates, we are more vulnerable to that. So we have 
the ability to do that for any legislation. What is the 
interest cost?
    What we have done so far is put up a spreadsheet on our 
website that has our interest rate projection, and anyone can 
do that, say, okay, if a bill costs, you know, $10, well, here 
is the sequence of interest costs coming out of it. So we 
haven't put that into a cost estimate, but we have given 
everyone a tool that they can do with that on their own.
    Mr. Moore. I would argue, and I would speak to our 
leadership, like, just having that on the website is great. I 
am glad that it is accessible, but I think we need to move past 
just the theoretical conversation about it and move that into a 
more concrete element, because it is a concrete factor, and it 
is our nation's number one issue on the fiscal side, is how 
much our net interest will continue to grow, and especially 
when you add in inflation, you add in interest rates, taking a 
quick little hike that is devastating to the entirety of the 
budget.
    I mean, we can predict Social Security, Medicare, defense, 
Medicaid, the approps bills, we can predict their growth rate 
pretty accurately with the standard things that go on here, but 
that net interest is going to be a huge burden.
    With my remaining time could you describe the collaborative 
process between CBO and JCT in developing fiscal projections? 
Do you share the methodologies and responsibilities and what 
lessons are learned? I was fascinated to kind of come in and I 
always want to find as much of anything that is duplicative, 
like, I want to just get rid of it back here. Can you just 
share some of your comments on that?
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. I will say 23 seconds' worth and happy to 
come and tell you more.
    So we are sister agencies. Anything that changes the Tax 
Code, they do; we stay out of their lane. So the bill today, 
that is being voted on today, there is a cost estimate that 
says CBO. Every number in there is from JCT----
    Mr. Moore. From JCT.
    Dr. Swagel [continuing]. From JCT by statute. Health care, 
the people and taxes are so woven together, we work 
collaboratively with them, and so that is just two examples of 
it.
    But it is, you know, sort of statute by--piece of 
legislation by legislation. We work collaboratively, but some 
things are theirs and we stay out of their lane.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you. I thank the Chairman.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman. I yield five 
minutes to our friend from California, Jimmy Panetta.
    Mr. Panetta. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 
Director Swagel, for being here. Obviously, we appreciate your 
candidness and your honesty because we know that congressional 
scorekeeping can definitely be a pretty fraught topic on 
Capitol Hill.
    But you have always been a trusted resource, especially 
when it comes to our debt and deficits and the cost of 
legislation, and I think, as you heard today, and as you know, 
both sides of the aisle have taken issue with CBO's methods or 
particular scores from time to time, and often it is 
politically motivated, but other times there are legitimate 
criticisms of methods.
    Now, I am glad that we are here today to discuss the CBO's 
role, examine where some of our differences lie, and see how we 
can achieve a common understanding of how CBO's models and 
scorekeeping work. More importantly, we need to get Congress 
closer to understanding the true costs of debt and deficits, of 
mandatory and discretionary spending, and the legislation that 
we bring before Congress. So thanks for being here today to 
talk about your process and how we might better understand and 
how we might better improve that process.
    Now, can you talk about the importance of interest rates to 
our debt and deficits? And pretty straightforward question, 
should Congress consider prioritizing deficit reduction when 
interest rates rise?
    Dr. Swagel. You know, as the debt has risen, our 
vulnerability to higher interest rates has gone up, and by the 
same token, if there were credible deficit reduction, that 
would lead to a positive effect in terms of lower interest 
rates. So there is a virtuous circle to be had there.
    Mr. Panetta. Got it. Now, let me kind of hit on something 
that I think we are going to be seeing a lot, especially coming 
up with our vote tonight. The Employee Retention Tax Credit, I 
think, was something that obviously helped out during the 
pandemic, kept businesses afloat. Unfortunately, years after 
the pandemic closures, we have been bombarded with these ads. I 
think all of us have heard it in this room, telling small 
businesses to apply for a credit that they really, I think we 
have seen, don't need and likely aren't eligible for.
    Now, I will note that we would end this credit early as a 
pay-for for the tax credit deal that we passed out of Ways and 
Means, which raises $70 billion and appears that the ERTC alone 
contributed to both about $50 billion in outlays and an 
overestimate of $70 billion in revenues. Can you explain how 
this credit contributed to the overestimates and underestimates 
and how they impact your corrected projections?
    Dr. Swagel. You know, so, as you said, the ERTC was meant 
to support businesses, you know, for the challenges they had in 
the pandemic. Businesses now can amend their tax filings from 
several years ago during the pandemic, and that is the activity 
that we see in 2023. There is this, I think cottage industry is 
the right word of the business of the ads that you said, 
helping businesses do that amending, and then the IRS, you 
know, would be expected to send out checks in response.
    Mr. Panetta. Okay, great. Once again, thank you for being 
here. I appreciate your information, not just today, but as we 
go forward and continue to try to do our jobs. Thank you.
    Dr. Swagel. Thank you.
    Mr. Panetta. I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from California. 
I yield five minutes to our friend from Kansas, Ron Estes.
    Mr. Estes. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 
Dr. Swagel, for being here today.
    We appreciate the time and all the Congressional Budget 
Office does to help facilitate the work we do here in Congress, 
but frankly, the CBO has fallen short in recent years on some 
of its work, and I hope that after today's conversation, you 
feel emboldened to actually address some of the needed changes 
to make sure that you continue to address and support Congress 
over the years to come.
    Obviously, CBO plays an important role in our lawmaking 
process. In order to address issues, Members of Congress depend 
on organizations like CBO to assist in legislation, and 
accurate budgeting and economic analysis and accurate 
projections are essential tools that help us craft legislation 
and weigh how we vote.
    One of the key things that I always look at in terms of 
forecasting is making sure we have small variations between the 
forecasted amount and the actual amount. Whether the 
forecasting error, which there is some because it is difficult 
to do, but whether the error is on the high side or the low 
side, as long as it is a small variation between the actual and 
the forecasted, we will have the best opportunity to have the 
best results, and with our debt the way it is now at $34 
trillion, obviously that analysis is important. With the debt 
increasing over the last year by over $2.6 trillion, it means 
we are now spending $85,000 each second that is being increased 
to the national debt. It is not sustainable, and we have got to 
be able to make those spending decisions with the best 
information we have available, and so that is the focus that I 
want to talk a little bit about.
    One of the things that was mentioned, and one of the things 
that is really important, and I want to highlight this here, is 
that, you know, when the TCJA, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was 
implemented, part of the discussion and part of the estimate 
was that there would be a loss in revenue, and I think one of 
the numbers thrown around was about $1.5 trillion over the 10-
year window.
    Just to highlight, now, if I look at what the revenue 
projections that CBO made after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 
passed versus what the revenue has come in from 2018 to 2023, 
actually, we have already collected a trillion dollars more 
than what was projected, and if the next two years before the 
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire continues on at the same rate as 
the last couple of years, it will more than pay for that $1.5 
trillion.
    So that is one of those things as we make decisions about 
tax cuts or about other things, I mean, something like this 
that shows that the Trump tax cuts paid for themselves over 
that time period from 2018 to 2025, we need that accurate 
information.
    So one of the things I wanted to ask is, you know, what 
kind of ideas are you looking at or plans that you are looking 
at on how to revise what CBO does to make sure that we have 
greater accuracy in budgeting or assessing key pieces of 
legislation? And how do we compare that with other models like 
Penn Wharton or University of Chicago, and their differences in 
projections?
    Dr. Swagel. No, no, thank you, and I agree with the 
importance of what you said.
    One key area that I am pushing on is our ability to do 
dynamic analysis to get those relationships between changes in 
tax policy in the economy and then the feedback to revenue. We 
have done it in the past. We did it with the 2017 Tax Act, but 
we haven't--and we have done a few other little things, but I 
am looking at what major legislation could we, you know, make 
sure that we are in position to do? So tax is one, immigration 
is another, and obviously, CBO has no opinion on what the right 
immigration legislation is, but I want to make sure that we are 
in position that if there is, we would be ready to say, what is 
the effect on the economy? What is the effect on--you know the 
dynamic effect, and again, whatever legislation comes forward.
    Mr. Estes. What kind of comparison or analysis do you do 
today of actuals versus what you have forecasted? I mean, do 
you actually sit down at the end of the year and end of the 
quarter and come back and look and say, well, this worked, this 
didn't, and how do we adjust that or tweak that and, you know, 
kind of a scorecard yourself?
    Dr. Swagel. No, that is right. So we do that in two ways. 
One is on the account level that generally twice or sometimes 
three times a year, lately it has been twice just because the 
press of business, every analyst sits down with managers and 
with me, and we go through line by line. Okay, you know, SNAP 
benefits, it was higher and here's why, you know. Whatever. 
Every line, it is on the micro level. Then we look at the 
overall, and so that is the trillion-dollar miss that came from 
our report at the end of last year, going at the big picture 
level of the miss that we had.
    Mr. Estes. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. 
Obviously, it is an important issue. We want to make sure we 
get good, accurate information to help us make those decisions. 
I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Kansas. I 
now yield five minutes to Ms. Balint from Vermont.
    Ms. Balint. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
    Doctor, I really appreciate you being here today. As you 
know, you and I had a rich conversation about the work of the 
CBO last year in my office, and I really appreciate the 
commitment that you have to evidence-based policymaking. That 
is the way we should be doing our work always.
    So one lesser known, I think, CBO function is the reports 
that you do on the effects of policies over the long term, and 
I am keenly interested in the Federal response to the opioid 
crisis.
    In Vermont, many of my neighbors, community members, and 
friends have tragically been impacted by the opioid crisis, and 
in 2022, we have already lost, you know, hundreds of people to 
drug overdoses. Drugs like xylazine and fentanyl are making the 
crisis so much worse.
    I have been working on this issue both here in Congress and 
also my time in the state legislature, and I know it is an 
issue that we actually have agreement on across the aisle. This 
is killing our constituents. It is killing the people who sent 
us here to do work on their behalf, and it is really important 
that the resources that we commit to this are actually doing a 
good job at combating this.
    So Congress has committed significant resources through the 
Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act in 2016, the 21st 
Century Cures Act, the Substance Use Disorder Prevention that 
promotes opioid recovery and treatment known as SUPPORT for 
Patients and Communities Act, and according to one study 
referenced in CBO's 2022 report, the opioid crisis and recent 
Federal policy responses, discretionary spending to combat the 
opioid crisis increased from $2.1 billion in Fiscal Year 2017 
to $6.1 billion in Fiscal Year 2020.
    Your report stated, though, that opioid-involved deaths 
have continued to increase after Federal laws on this issue 
were enacted, and initially we had a slowing, but then it was 
preceded by years that we saw rapid increase in deaths related 
to the pandemic. So clearly, our investments, while 
significant, you know, haven't gone far enough or haven't been 
as effective as we need them to be.
    So can you just tell us a little bit about why it is so 
important to review the impact and efficacy of enacted 
legislation in charting a better path forward?
    Dr. Swagel. No, thank you. We are working hard on that, on 
looking at the impact of legislation and providing you with 
information on this worked, this didn't seem to work. You know, 
never to tell you what to do, but to help you decide.
    It is one of the--it is the shortcomings of that first 
report that you said that we couldn't evaluate what Congress 
had done just because it was too new, and so that is what we 
are working on now, we are continuing to work on, is a follow 
up to that report with more evaluation, and some of it might be 
tentative, but if we can point you to say, here was the impact 
of, you know, this program and that program. We are not there 
yet, but I agree, it is essential for us to do it and we are 
working hard on it.
    Ms. Balint. I really appreciate that, and as I said, I know 
it is something, it doesn't matter what congressional district 
you represent, every community is dealing with this, and it is 
really important for us to examine the work, make sure we are 
targeting the resources to the right places, figure out what is 
working and what is not.
    I know that it is impacting families in every single town, 
county, and city in our country. We have to get beyond the 
partisan rhetoric around this. We really, really do. This is 
lives. I am a former teacher, and the number of students that I 
have had that have been impacted by the opioid epidemic and 
their friends and their families, it is just absolutely 
devastating.
    The other thing I want to ask you about is the fact that, 
you know, Congress really does have some power that we can 
leverage to reduce health care costs, and again, I think this 
is something both sides of the aisle can agree on, and Doctor, 
as you know, there is a lack of competition in the health care 
sector and it is driving up costs for Vermonters and for people 
across the nation. So I am wondering, you know, what do you see 
as Federal legislation that can help combat exorbitant health 
care costs?
    And I know I am almost out of time, but if you just point 
us in that direction again.
    Chairman Arrington. You bet, go ahead.
    Dr. Swagel. I will give a quick response and I will come 
and bring the health team and we will tell you more.
    Ms. Balint. Yeah.
    Dr. Swagel. It is an issue across many aspects of the 
health system and challenges, the system is so complex and 
there are so many sort of noncompetitive aspects to it that 
there is not like one thing to do, and so there is a little bit 
of we are looking at piece by piece, you know, hospitals, 
pharma, other providers, and so I will come back.
    Ms. Balint. I appreciate that.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentlelady from Vermont----
    Ms. Balint. I yield back. Thank you.
    Chairman Arrington. You bet. I now yield five minutes to 
our friend from Indiana and the Chair of the Budget Process 
Reform Task Force, Rudy Yakym, for five minutes.
    Mr. Yakym. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this 
hearing, and thank you to Dr. Swagel for being here today.
    For over 50 years, the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, 
has been tasked with providing objective, nonpartisan data and 
information to help support the Federal budget process. 
Ensuring the accuracy of CBO's modeling, legislative scoring, 
and academic reports is essential to helping us as legislators 
make the best and most informed decisions possible.
    I believe that in some ways the CBO has been successful in 
meeting those objectives, and in other ways it has certainly 
fallen short. For example, the CBO's initial projection for 
drug price quote negotiation provisions in the Inflation 
Reduction Act, the IRA, estimated that only one less drug would 
come to the market in the ten years following passage, but a 
year and a half later, we have already seen multiple treatments 
and cures pulled from the research pipeline due to these forced 
government negotiations. This includes potential treatments and 
cures for rare eye disorders and other cancers.
    Another area I am deeply concerned about is the CBO's 
underestimation of the 2023 budget deficit projections by $1 
trillion. In a time where Federal spending is certainly out of 
control, we need to take meaningful steps to rein in our 
spending, and it is critical that we have accurate projections.
    Dr. Swagel, in your testimony, you addressed the various 
components that contributed to CBO's trillion-dollar 
underestimation of our 2023 deficit, but briefly, what changes 
are you making to the model to ensure that these errors aren't 
repeated again next year?
    Dr. Swagel. No, thank you. So, you know, I have looked at 
this carefully and the pieces that--the miss was entirely ours. 
That is what I have been focusing on. You know, the things the 
Administration did something, you know, I don't think I could 
have reasonably predicted that, but like the inflation 
forecast, the interest rate forecast, that was our--we were 
off, and we have worked hard to get that right.
    Mr. Yakym. So specific to my question, what changes are you 
making at this point in time to ensure that we get a more 
accurate forecast next year?
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah. So I look carefully at, well, why did we 
get it wrong? We had high inflation, but inflation was much 
higher even than we said. So why? What did we miss?
    And we missed some aspects of what was happening on supply 
chains, and so we have worked much harder, and then the 
interaction of the instance of the fiscal policy with the 
supply chain disruption, we missed some of that interaction, 
and so we have worked hard to get that better.
    Mr. Yakym. You mentioned you are focused on the things that 
you can control, which I think is the appropriate steps to 
take, but you also mentioned things that the Biden 
Administration did last year that exacerbated our deficit. Can 
you provide maybe an example or two of the single biggest 
things the Biden Administration did in terms of their executive 
orders of what you might call broad interpretation of 
legislation that contributed to last year's sky high deficit?
    Dr. Swagel. Okay, and I will mention maybe three quickly. 
One is on student loans, and there we estimate current law, and 
when they take these actions, we tally them. We work with the 
Ed and Workforce Committee so they understand them, but it is 
going to be an error for us.
    Two is the revenue delays from the disaster tax 
declaration. That is going to be a shift of timing. Revenues, 
instead of coming in in 2023, will come in in 2024. So as a 
miss for 2023, we have to work hard to make sure we don't, you 
know, get the same miss in the other direction.
    Then the last one is the corporate minimum tax. The 
Administration--the law was enacted. The Administration hasn't 
yet put out a guidance, so corporations haven't yet paid the 
money. It will show up, but again, it is going to show up in 
the future.
    Mr. Yakym. Thank you, Dr. Swagel. I am a strong supporter 
of preventative health care measures. They are essential to the 
long-term health of all Americans, and frequently preventative 
health care bills score poorly given their higher upfront 
costs, and they don't necessarily take the long-term benefits 
into play.
    How is the CBO trying to adapt their models to accurately 
reflect the long-term savings of preventative health care?
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. No, very good, and it is something we are 
working hard on.
    We need to be able to understand the benefits in the 
future, including outside the 10-year window and then, you 
know, a challenge with the preventative care. So we are working 
hard on that.
    So I mentioned Ozempic, the weight loss, anti-obesity. We 
are working hard to understand the cardiovascular benefits of 
those medications, as an example.
    Mr. Yakym. So the ability to look longer than ten years for 
potential savings might--would be a benefit to CBO.
    Dr. Swagel. That is an important piece of it. I will 
mention one other piece which relates actually to what Mr. 
Peters had said with the hospital we talked to in San Diego, is 
the targeting, and they were working hard to say, well, which 
children need this genetic screening, you know, where it will 
have the biggest difference? And so that is also a piece in 
substances with the obesity medication. How can, you know, 
policymakers target that, at the people who will be sick in the 
future and, therefore, avoid the costs?
    Mr. Yakym. Thank you, Director Swagel, and, Mr. Chairman, 
as Chair of the Budget Process Task Force on Reform, we will be 
looking into that in terms of a longer window.
    Chairman Arrington. Well, we appreciate your diligence on 
that front, and I thank the gentleman from Indiana. Ms. Jackson 
Lee from the great state of Texas, five minutes.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Dr. 
Swagel, welcome.
    Just because our time is short, what is a singular major 
point that you look at when you score legislation?
    Dr. Swagel. You know, for many things, it is how many 
people are affected and what is the cost or savings per person? 
And so a lot of times that is what it boils down to is the sort 
of P times Q.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. So you want to look at really benefit to 
the American people, ultimately.
    Dr. Swagel. We try to provide information on that. We focus 
on the cost, and then sometimes the cost and the benefit are 
just--you know, they can be the same, but they can also be 
separate. So we try to provide you with information on the 
benefits, but our mission really is focused on the costs.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. I think you did an analysis of the Trump 
tax cuts, and my understanding is that analysis showed that 
they did not pay for themselves. In fact, the Tax Act was 
estimated to increase the deficit by more than $1 trillion over 
ten years. Is that accurate?
    Dr. Swagel. That is correct, yes.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. And how did you assess that impact, 
negative impact?
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. I will just say briefly, first of all, we 
worked with the Joint Committee on Taxation, which does the 
estimates of tax legislation. We looked at the effects of the 
tax cut on businesses, on households, and then the effect from 
there to the economy, and then back to revenue, and so we said 
there'd be a positive impact on some businesses and some 
households, but not enough to fully pay for them.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. I think that is important to put on the 
record, they did not pay for themselves.
    One of my colleagues just asked about Biden proposals that 
impacted the economy. The student loans, wouldn't that give 
more fluidity in one's income as one of the student loan 
recipients, if you will? And to benefit from that reduction, 
wouldn't that counter any impact on the economy for there to be 
more cash flow in their pockets using the economy?
    Dr. Swagel. Yes, that is exactly right. Those actions, we 
tally the cost. We also try to say, well, what is the impact on 
consumer spending and households and so on.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. The student loan reduction might, in fact, 
generate an impact in the economy for the use of more cash in 
their pockets.
    Dr. Swagel. That is right.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. So if we had to make an analysis of going 
further, this is just me speaking, I might look at that as a 
positive step to go forward to help that generation that seems 
to be plagued with one student loan after another, because that 
is what I'd like to see happen.
    Dr. Swagel. Oh, I see. No, no, no, that is right, and the 
forgiveness, as you said, would affect certain generations 
younger rather than older. That is right.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Let's take a journey down a racial equity 
road and give us a sense in particular of the numbers that we 
find in people of color, and particularly African Americans. I 
think they have made at least some progress under the Biden 
Administration on unemployment, but it is not in housing, 
health care, and so have you taken a look, since we serve a 
very broad, diverse nation, the issues that we are confronting 
with racial inequities?
    Dr. Swagel. Yes. If it is okay, can I mention three ways 
that we are trying to meet that?
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Yes. I think we spoke before of the H.R. 
40 concept of reparations.
    Dr. Swagel. Reparations, right, and I apologize, we haven't 
analyzed that.
    But on health care that you mentioned, we have been working 
to make it so that we can analyze health insurance and 
coverage, breaking it down by race that, as you said, there is 
great inequality, you know, by different dimensions, and one of 
them is race, and we haven't been able to analyze that. We are 
getting close, and so we will be able to do that.
    The same on tax policy. There is a slideshow on our website 
from some of our analysts. We have been working with the Census 
Bureau to be able to relate tax information by race, which, of 
course, you don't put your race on your tax, on your 1040, but 
we have been trying to make it that we could at least say 
something.
    And then the last one we are doing is flood insurance, and 
this is--Representative Waters has been, you know, instructing 
us to do this, is to say, well, what is the effect of flooding 
by different communities, not just by location, but by race? 
And so we have been working hard on that as well.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Well, can I ask you to add again, my 
discussion on H.R. 40 is to raise that as an analysis that 
speaks to the historical record of African Americans and how 
that trajectory impacts their economic status even today. That 
would cover--I think, I would like to have you emphasize 
housing affordability, housing access, which is everyone's 
pathway to wealth. Ownership of property and, or in the form of 
housing is a door opener to wealth.
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. No, and I understand that because these 
past inequities play out today on household wealth. So the 
inequalities of the past and the injustices of the past affect 
the families of today. We are not working on it now. If we had 
the ability to, I agree, we need to work on that.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentlelady.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I now yield five minutes to my friend 
from the Palmetto State, Ralph Norman.
    Mr. Norman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Director 
Swagel, for coming.
    You know, you have heard over and over again the accuracy 
of what your reporting has been. Would you agree spending is 
the cancer in this country, overspending.
    Dr. Swagel. Overspending presents economic difficulties.
    Mr. Norman. Let me just give you a rundown. In May of 2022, 
the projected outlay was $5.9 trillion. In 2023, the actual 
from the CBO was $6.5 trillion. Net interest spending was $217 
billion higher than projected. Higher education, $143 billion 
higher than projected by the CBO. FDIC, $99 billion higher than 
projected. SNAP, $18 billion higher than projected.
    Now, I am in the real estate business. If you and your 
family were starting a business, and I consistently gave you 
figures that were much higher that you had to get a loan for, 
would you keep me on board?
    And as I heard one of my friends from the other side, they 
said what you needed, I mean, it is costing us taxpayers to 
fund the CBO, $63 million a year. You have got 275 employees. 
Would you tell me that if I were, the scenario I presented you, 
would you want to give me more money to put bad figures in 
front of you?
    Dr. Swagel. Well, I would say two things. One is I would 
want to know, well, what was it? What went wrong? And that is 
what I tried to explain some of that in my testimony.
    And then two is I would say, well, with the additional 
funds, what would you do? Would it make it better or would you 
get more of the same?
    Mr. Norman. But you would be pretty mad, wouldn't you, if I 
gave you bad figures consistently?
    Dr. Swagel. I mean, well, you can see I don't get mad 
easily. So I wouldn't get mad, but I would be just curious.
    Mr. Norman. Who is your boss? Do you do a customer survey? 
Do you get with them? Who do you answer to, in your opinion?
    Dr. Swagel. So we answer to you. We work through the Budget 
Committees, but we work for all the Committees of jurisdiction, 
and so we work in services in both of those levels, and so on 
health legislation, our boss would be the Committees that work 
on health legislation.
    Mr. Norman. Well, I think you would get--if you didn't get 
mad, if it were coming out of your pocket, you would get mad 
because, you know, you can't reward bad behavior.
    On what method of estimating cost of the Federal credit 
programs would be the most comprehensive assessing the market-
based risk?
    Dr. Swagel. That is right. No, the market-based risk would 
provide a comprehensive assessment, and, for example, student 
loans, we don't have that in there because by statute we are 
required--you know, we are directed not to put that in there.
    Mr. Norman. Is it fair value?
    Dr. Swagel. Fair value would do it. It would give you the 
most comprehensive assessment of risk.
    Mr. Norman. Okay. On the Fair Credit Reporting Act, FCRA, 
give me your take on that.
    Dr. Swagel. It is, you know, it is something we evaluate 
when it has budgetary consequences, and it is a balancing act 
between protecting consumers and affecting the flow of credit 
and what that means to consumers who don't have access to 
credit.
    Mr. Norman. Describe the green energy loan programs and the 
costs on the FCRA fair value analysis.
    Dr. Swagel. So the green tax credit programs, the challenge 
there is that--well, first of all, those are JCT numbers that 
we then update. You know, the market has evolved quickly and 
the Administration has implemented those programs in ways that 
were more expansive than I think JCT had put into their 
estimate.
    So next week with the economic outlook, we will have more 
details. They are going to be substantially more expensive than 
the Joint Committee on Taxation originally estimated.
    Mr. Norman. Let me just suggest to you from our side, and 
you have kept hearing it, we have got to get accurate figures 
and heads need to roll in your department. I don't think you 
need more money. The 270 employees, the $63 million we are 
paying CBO to get numbers that never match up, particularly on 
the spending level, is atrocious, and all I would ask you to do 
is whoever your boss is that you consider, whoever in your, 
under you is giving you bad numbers, they need to do their job 
and we need to get numbers that are accurate. The things that 
come up that I hear now with CBO, we basically just start 
laughing because we don't believe the numbers.
    Thank you for coming and appreciate your time. I yield 
back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from South 
Carolina. I now yield five minutes to our friend from Michigan, 
Dan Kildee.
    Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Dr. 
Swagel, for being here.
    I have been around a long time. There are still two things 
that are mysteries to me: pro wrestling and CBO scoring. So if 
you can help me figure out either one of those, I think we will 
be moving in the right direction.
    But I think we equally sometimes share curiosity about how 
some of the conclusions are drawn. I would understand that some 
of your challenges, when policy decisions are made after your 
analysis is done, that it is obviously going to affect the 
outcome.
    But I do want to focus on a particular question, and that 
has to do with what I refer to as legacy industrial cities. I 
come from Flint, Michigan. I was the county treasurer back 
home. Much of my career before Congress was focused on the 
condition of older industrial cities. I represent Saginaw, 
Flint, Bay City, communities that have great legacies but have 
difficult current conditions, but are starting to see some 
renaissance as a result of some of the work that we have done 
here in Congress: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, making a 
difference; CHIPS and Science Act, seeing us reshore 
manufacturing and investing in new technology that delivers 
really good jobs.
    My curiosity is that these investments I have seen 
firsthand, the impact they can have on those older industrial 
legacy communities in terms of their ability to not be a drain 
on the national fisc, but actually contribute to a more stable 
economy and a more stable budget outlook for the country, and I 
am curious as to the extent that the CBO is able to analyze 
those sorts of investments and looking at the all in effect of 
those sorts of investments on those communities and ultimately 
on their contribution to our economic and fiscal situation.
    So if you could just discuss momentarily the research CBO 
has done on the impact of Federal policymaking on employment, 
on economic growth in these most distressed communities, and 
then what additional resources or technical capabilities you 
would need if we were able to expand that work.
    Dr. Swagel. Okay, and I will start by saying we do some, 
but not a lot and not enough, and so I am grateful to this for 
pointing me to it as something that we need to focus on more.
    In the future we will, we will go back and look at the 
effect of the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS bill, and I 
know that these regional effects are going to be an important 
part of the story of those bills. So we will get there in the 
future.
    We have done a little bit of it in the past, and so as an 
example, some of the provisions in the Build Back Better 
legislation that we scored when it was voted on in the House 
had a regional aspect, and so the, say, childcare subsidies or 
preschool subsidies, we called state by state to talk to them 
to figure out, okay, are you going to take up the program? What 
would you do? And then we added that up, and that was our 
estimate.
    So, you know, that sort of thing a little bit, but not, 
really not the big picture issues that you are focused on, and 
so I can only apologize, and we got to do better.
    Mr. Kildee. Well, I appreciate that, and I think one of the 
other aspects of your work that I just want to call out and see 
if you might comment on, I have long been of the view that the 
window over which we examine the efficacy of our investment 
decisions, whether it is tax policy or investments, in, say, 
early childhood education since you referenced it, the 10-year 
window is interesting. I think it might be the wrong 10-year 
window.
    If you think about the impact of early childhood education, 
there is often criticism of programs like Head Start, for 
example. Looking at the next ten years for a 3-year-old is 
interesting. Looking at the ten years from age 13 to 23 or the 
ten years from age 23 to 33 is where that investment bears its 
greatest fruit. Do we ever look at that? Do we ever supply data 
on those longer term impacts?
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. No, and I agree with everything you said. 
We have started. So we have a project that so far we have put 
out one paper on to look at investments in children is what we 
think of it as, that if you provide health care to a child, 
including in utero, what does it do to their long-term 
trajectory? And like you said, age 23, 33, and on, and so we 
have looked at that, what is the additional revenue that is 
spun off? And then how does that compare to the cost?
    And so we will get you that, but in some sense, that is the 
proof of concept, and I want to make sure that we are ready to 
provide you information on future legislation that has that 
property, that kind of long-term benefits.
    Mr. Kildee. I appreciate that. That is very helpful. And in 
the remaining ten seconds, anything at all on pro wrestling?
    Dr. Swagel. You know, I have a former student who is a pro 
wrestler.
    Mr. Kildee. You do?
    Dr. Swagel. He briefly played for the Dolphins and then 
went into pro wrestling. I will hook you up. No, no, no, no.
    Mr. Kildee. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Arrington. We have such broad authority here. I am 
not surprised when anything, including pro wrestling.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Arrington. Thank you, Mr. Kildee. I now yield five 
minutes to our friend from Oklahoma--yes, ma'am.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Just procedural. Just procedural. Thank 
you so very much.
    In the financial commission markup, I would like to place 
on the record at the appropriate place my vote for aye for the 
Ranking Member's amendment and the Jackson Lee amendment. I was 
unavoidably detained, and so I would like the record to reflect 
I would have voted aye for those two amendments.
    Chairman Arrington. Without objection, so ordered.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. I thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. Mr. Brecheen, five minutes, our friend 
from Oklahoma.
    Mr. Brecheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director, thank you 
for coming before us.
    You know, the CBO has a unique relationship to the Budget 
Committee, as was mentioned by the Chairman. You know, the lack 
of true oversight by this Committee for a number of years has 
been lacking, and I appreciate the Committee actually taking 
our responsibility seriously.
    Many of us came to get our spending issues under control, 
that is inclusive, both revenue and the spend, and I appreciate 
the fact that, you know, there is an attempt made to get 
accurate numbers. I am concerned that maybe there is some 
mission creep that has occurred. You have heard the statement, 
jack of all trades, master of none, and so I want to kind of 
talk about the dabbling by the CBO in areas that may be 
stealing the intellectual heft to focus on the things that are 
the priorities and the original reason, the original mission.
    According to the CBO report titled ``CBO's Recent 
Publications and Work in Progress as of December 31, 2023,'' 
there were several items of concern--for me, concern--about how 
you guys are moving into the climate hysteria realm.
    So I will quote from the CBO's drafting report. You were 
evaluating the effects of climate change on markets for 
property and casualty insurance. You were summarizing the risk 
that climate changes pose for the budget and the economy. CBO 
spent countless hours and resources publishing reports titled, 
``Carbon Capture Storage in the United States.'' I can't see 
how that has anything to do with the budget. ``Emissions of 
Carbon Dioxide in the Electric Power Sector,'' again, how does 
that relate to core mission? ``Emissions of Carbon Dioxide in 
the Transportation Sector.''
    So mission creep, absolutely to me is clear in this and the 
intellectual heft borrowing of assigning staff to work on that 
type of activity when we are missing projections in the 
trillion-dollar range.
    So I would just like for you to put your bipartisan, 
straight reasoning. What is the mission of CBO? Why are we 
getting involved in this?
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. No, thank, and thank you, this is 
something that started with me as Director, is this quarterly 
report on what we are working on. So, you know, thank you for 
mentioning it.
    We do have a pretty robust work program on climate, and you 
mentioned some of it, in terms of there is two pieces to it. 
One is that--well, yeah, I will say the two pieces and say why 
we got there. I will be fast.
    It is to say if there is eventual climate legislation, we 
want to be ready for it, and so that is why we are looking at 
the transportation sector, we are looking at manufacturing, 
electric power generation, the places where, well, the Biden 
Administration and others have focused on as potential 
legislation, and of course, we have no view on what the right 
thing is. I want to make sure we are ready to estimate it, and 
so that is a big piece of it.
    And then secondly, we respond to Members. If a Chair or a 
Ranking Member of a Committee has jurisdiction, wants a report 
on something, and I can do it, we are going to do it, and so 
some of the reports that you mentioned were, you know, 
directed, we were directed to do it, and so we were responding 
to congressional interest.
    Mr. Brecheen. Is the CBO the proper placement for those 
requests? Is there not GAO, Congressional Research Service? It 
is the better placement when they are asking you to analyze the 
amount of storage capacity for carbon in the United States. 
Again, staff devoted to that, when it could go to CRS or GAO, 
that steals from the time and placement of getting the numbers 
correct that this Committee absolutely has to have to make, you 
know, the biggest decision Congress is tasked with, which is 
power of the purse.
    Dr. Swagel. No, that is right, and that is part of the 
management challenge, is allocating resources, and there is 
substantial congressional interest in the topic, and that is 
why we have, you know, these people working on it.
    Mr. Brecheen. Do you have the ability to say, we are not 
the proper entity for this? This needs to go to CRS. This needs 
to go to GAO.
    Dr. Swagel. You know, there are some things that does 
happen, essentially something backward looking, evaluate past 
legislation, GAO, you know, has many more people, so we do it 
sometimes.
    Mr. Brecheen. How many staff are--I have nine seconds. I 
apologize for interrupting.
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah, yeah, sorry.
    Mr. Brecheen. How many staff are associated with anything 
in this realm? How many total staff do you have associated in 
this realm?
    Dr. Swagel. Well, it could be a dozen, eight. I mean, there 
is a dozen working in micro, but that----
    Mr. Brecheen. So 12 people at approximately $100,000 
salaries, that is real numbers.
    Dr. Swagel. I am including people who work on lots of 
different things because, you know, like our financial modelers 
would help with our flood insurance, for example. So there is a 
core group that is four or five, and then there is, you know, 
six to eight others who contribute in various ways.
    Mr. Brecheen. I will just yield to this, Mr. Chairman, I 
appreciate your indulgence. We are missing it by miles in terms 
of our projections. This is a new initiative. Maybe there is a 
correlation. I yield.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma, 
and yield to my dear friend from the great state of Texas, Mr. 
Chip Roy, for five minutes.
    Mr. Roy. Thank you, Chairman. Dr. Swagel, great to have you 
here. Appreciate your service, and I have just got a couple of 
different questions.
    The first question is, I want to make sure that I have my 
facts right, and we visited about this, and I appreciate your 
willingness to visit with staff and offices at a moment's 
notice, and I will say that you guys are great and responsive, 
and we appreciate that.
    Recently you all found, and I believe put out a letter to 
this effect, that a full year continuing resolution under the 
statutory caps that were in the Fiscal Responsibility Act from 
last year that were passed on a bipartisan basis with majority 
votes by Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate, 
that doing so would decrease nondefense discretionary spending 
by $73 billion while holding defense spending and veterans 
spending harmless, i.e., flat. Is that roughly correct?
    Dr. Swagel. Yes, that is correct, and you can see that at 
the bottom of our cost estimate for each of these continuing 
resolutions.
    Mr. Roy. So it is fair to say, without you opining on the 
merits, obviously, substantively, in terms of the legislation 
or the political decisions we have to make, that that passing 
of a continuing resolution, a full year CR that would basically 
come in somewhere around the $1.564 trillion level, roughly, 
that that would be significantly lower than the $1.59 trillion 
cap in the FRA. It would be significantly lower than the 
current appropriations deal on the table, which adds in 
additional--again, whatever merit there is for doing so, or 
lack of merit, that the additional spending that would come in 
at $1.66 trillion. Right?
    So the point is just a simple matter of fact, a continuing 
resolution passed right now, a full year continuing resolution, 
worded appropriately, that talks about it being a full year 
appropriation, would save the American people about, give or 
take, $100 billion or a significant amount of savings, give or 
take, off of the deal currently being negotiated at roughly 
$1.66 trillion and significantly less than even the $1.59 
trillion levels at the top levels of caps. Am I roughly 
articulating that correctly?
    Dr. Swagel. Yes, if it is okay, I want to add just one. So 
yes, period. One note is that the legislation now being 
negotiated and, obviously, we haven't evaluated yet.
    Mr. Roy. Correct.
    Dr. Swagel. So I can't speak to that, but as a broader----
    Mr. Roy. Understood, yeah. To the extent that news accounts 
are suggesting that it would be at the $1.59 trillion plus some 
additional spending based on whatever side agreements were 
reached there would be a materially lower spending level, if we 
simply, as a body, passed a CR that adheres to the caps that 
this body passed by majority votes by House Republicans, House 
Democrats, and the Senate passed by majority House Republicans, 
literally, we will save the American people $100 billion by 
adhering to law that was enacted, signed by the President of 
the United States. I just want everybody to know that as these 
deals are being discussed.
    Second question is, you and I have discussed, and again, I 
appreciate you all's office's attentiveness and responsiveness, 
we struggle as a body to get what I would say is accurate, 
dynamic scoring on bills when we get out of the kind of typical 
static scoring that we do here.
    When you have got something, for example, I have got bills. 
A lot of my colleagues have bills on health savings accounts 
and what I might call health care freedom, ways to massively 
empower individuals with dollars that go to them, give them the 
tax break that we are largely giving to corporate America or 
rejigger how we handle the tax breaks for corporate America 
that those can go into savings accounts instead of being, you 
know, paying for the, you know, health insurance premiums.
    We have got to find a way--and I just want to say this in a 
public setting, so again, I want to give you credit. We have 
had good conversations about all these kinds of things. It is 
important to say in a public setting how CBO can be responsive 
going forward, and what can Congress do and what can this 
Committee do to get CBO to have the tools necessary, you know, 
that might be Budget?
    And my friend was talking about your budget and what your 
staff looks like or outside groups or whatever. We have got to 
be able to do that to be able to take into account, I just 
wanted to hear your comments on it, the dynamic impact of 
driving prices down by having transparency. You don't have to 
comment on the policy of it, but to be able to assess what that 
impact would be if we do that, right? No one knows, but yet we 
get told, oh, that will cost a trillion dollars. So then it is 
dead on arrival.
    But we can never have a creative way to approach making 
sure that American people have doctors and, you know, can go to 
the doctors of their choice and have choice. Instead we are 
stuck with ``that will cost a trillion dollars.''
    I am not faulting you, but I am faulting this very broken 
system. We have got to find a way to break that. So I just 
wonder if you have any comments on what that might look like 
besides what I know would be an easy answer, which is more 
staffing, which I get, but if, could you comment on that? Then 
I will yield back.
    Dr. Swagel. Okay, and you have hit on what was not just my 
goal, but my mission, to be responsive and to be transparent, 
to respond to your interest in this legislation. I know many 
others have the same interest and to do it in a way that you 
can understand. If you agree or disagree, at least we will 
understand what the differences are. On something like this, 
the kind of change to the tax benefits in the health care 
system, we would work with the Joint Committee on Taxation, so 
it would depend on their capacity as well.
    But, you know, we have the ability. It is just the health 
committees, boy, they keep us busy basically full time, and so 
we are just constantly struggling to get----
    Mr. Roy. We call that a hamster wheel, but anyway go ahead.
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah, yeah. I can do the water level to here 
instead of here, but we absolutely have the ability. It is just 
the time and the----
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the good Director. I thank the 
gentleman from Texas, and I know there is a longer conversation 
about a lot of these things. I appreciate those comments.
    I now yield to another great Texan from--our Health Care 
Task Force Chair, Dr. Burgess, for five minutes.
    Mr. Burgess. Thank you, Chairman Arrington, and Director 
Swagel, thank you for participating in the roundtable that we 
did in the Budget Task Force. I thought it was particularly 
revealing. We had a former CBO Director, Doug Holtz-Eakin, we 
had someone from the investor class, someone from the inventor 
class to talk to us about the effects of the Inflation 
Reduction Act and on basically delivering the cures for the 
future. I think we had a pretty good discussion.
    Then the plus side of all of that is, because of some 
discussions that you and the Chairman and I had, you have 
opened up a portal on the CBO website allowing stakeholders to 
submit research and data that they have regarding the reality 
of drug innovation. So I am grateful that this request was 
received and granted.
    I have a letter that I want to introduce to the record, 
Chairman Arrington, responding to the CBO's call for research 
in the area of drug development. This letter is signed by more 
than 350 biotech investors and innovators, representing $309 
billion.
    Chairman Arrington. Without objection, so ordered.
    [The information follows:]
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    Mr. Burgess. So, Director Swagel, I appreciate your 
cooperation over the last few months as the Task Force has 
engaged with you and your staff about the accuracy of your 
models. What has the CBO generally, and you specifically, 
learned from those conversations facilitated by the Task Force 
stakeholders?
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah. Thank you, and thank you again for having 
us participate and putting us together with these outside 
groups, and we have continued to engage with them. So the 
letter, it has shown up in my social media feeds, and I have 
read it. Our analysts working on this have read it, and there 
are some things in there which, you know, I wish they would do 
a little bit more to understand what we are doing, but there 
are some things where we are like, oh, yeah, they are right. We 
need to do it differently.
    So we are continuing to work on our modeling of the effect 
of negotiation on innovation, and we are going to implement 
some of what, as I understand it, is in the letter. So I 
appreciate that.
    Mr. Burgess. I appreciate that response. Mr. Yakym's 
discussion about preventative health and the 10-year window 
that came up from Mr. Kildee, and we are going to have an 
opportunity next week, I think, to mark up a bill for the 
Preventive Health Savings Act, particularly germane. I mean, it 
has always been germane. I have been working on this for 20 
years. It has always been germane.
    But really, the introduction of the new anti-obesity 
medications has kind of changed the equation. Of course, you 
have got Medicare that says we are not paying for any of that. 
You have got the Joint Economic Committee that says current 
obesity rates are responsible for a two and a half percent 
reduction in the aggregate labor supply, and that is a two 
percent reduction in the level of real GDP. From 2024 to 2033, 
this labor supply reduction is a potential GDP loss of $5.6 
trillion and a $1 trillion reduction in Federal income tax 
receipts. So that is pretty significant.
    Are you assessing how the anti-obesity medication coverage 
could affect the Federal budget with the broader economic 
factors that the CBO needs to take into account?
    Dr. Swagel. Yes, sir, we are. We are doing it both for 
anti-obesity and the related issue of hepatitis C, which has 
some similarities and some differences.
    And there is actually important developments. The FDA is 
considering adding a cardiovascular indication for the anti-
obesity medications in the sense that that would change current 
law. You know, if they do that, then Medicare presumably would 
cover those indications and some of the costs of additional, 
you know, broadening coverage for anti-obesity medications 
would move into the baseline. As a society, we'd still pay it, 
but it would be attributed to the baseline and not to any 
legislation. So that is a development that we are tracking 
carefully and we would update our analysis once that happens.
    Mr. Burgess. Great. I really appreciate your office's 
putting out the budgetary effect of the Center for Medicare and 
Medicaid Innovation. It has been a burr under my saddle for a 
long time. I never expected that CMMI was actually going to 
deliver the cost savings that was promised, and you weren't 
there when CBO scored the Affordable Care Act in 2010, but 
there was a big deliverable that CMMI was going to deliver, and 
I was never successful in bringing legislation to repeal the 
CMMI part of the ACA because, oh, look, it would cost money 
because we have already booked the savings that they are going 
to deliver for us.
    Of course, in your report, we got--at least I kind of get 
the inkling that those savings never actually materialized, and 
in fact, there may be an increase in spending.
    So I just want to point out to you that absent the CMMI, it 
is not like there is not any oversight over to the quality of 
some of the things that go in at the Center for Medicare and 
Medicaid Services, because in a bill signed by President Obama 
in 2015, the Physicians Technical Advisory Commission was 
created. It has existed now for almost ten years. It has been 
populated. A couple of the folks have resigned in disgust 
because they were not listened to by HHS.
    And I hope you would work with me to explore how, if CMMI 
is not working out, perhaps the Physician's Technical Advisory 
Commission, which was already established in law in the macro 
legislation, how we could use that to, in fact, achieve some of 
the savings models that were supposed to be achieved in CMMI.
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. No, no, you have that commitment.
    You were right on CMMI. We finally acknowledge it.
    Mr. Burgess. Wait, wait, say that again.
    Chairman Arrington. The record will reflect. So ordered. I 
approve. Hear ye, hear ye.
    Dr. Swagel. It took a while, but we put it out, and no, 
seriously, I look forward to working with you on the 
physicians--the other advisory committee.
    Mr. Burgess. Can I get you to call my wife and tell her 
that I was right?
    Chairman Arrington. Dr. Swagel, thank you.
    Mr. Burgess. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. Dr. Burgess, that exchange is an 
example of why you are an institution and a great asset for the 
conference, our Congress, and the American people on the issues 
of health care policy.
    Thankfully, we have got health care policy leaders, like 
the gentleman to your left, who limped on in to the Committee 
today, literally, Buddy Carter, the gentleman from Georgia for 
five minutes.
    Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 
Director, for being here. I appreciate it.
    Let's start with this. Let's start with timely and 
responsive scoring. There has been a lot of discussion and 
concern among Members of the Committees regarding the amount of 
time it is taking CBO to score these bills. Because, as you 
know, and it is no secret, everybody here knows that the CBO 
score is very important. We pay attention to it. Regardless of 
how many instances we might be able to point out where you were 
grossly wrong, we still depend on it, and I think you 
understand that.
    And look, I am being practical here. I know that in the 
118th Congress that we are in right now, we have had over 7,000 
bills introduced. I know that is a heavy lift. I know that is a 
lot of work. So I am not trying to be impractical, but, you 
know, and I suspect most of them need CBO scores. I don't know 
what percentage of them, but I would suspect it is the vast 
majority of them that need a CBO score.
    So, again, I understand it is a heavy lift, but I have got 
a bill. It is a bipartisan bill, H.R. 1770, the Equitable 
Community Access to Pharmacist Services, that was introduced in 
March of 2023. It is my understanding that the bill was sent to 
CBO for scoring in June by committee staff, yet we still don't 
have a score.
    Is it unreasonable for Members of Congress to think that 
seven months is not enough time to come up with a score for 
something like this?
    Dr. Swagel. No, you know, you have put your finger on one 
of the challenges I face, is that the bill would recognize that 
pharmacists provide health care services and are a key way that 
people get health care provided to them.
    Mr. Carter. You do also realize that pharmacists are the 
most accessible health care professionals in America. Ninety-
five percent of all Americans live within five miles of a 
pharmacy. All of us, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, want 
the same thing when it comes to health care: accessible, 
affordable, quality health care.
    Dr. Swagel. That is right, and the challenge I face is that 
the committees with jurisdiction over Medicare, their workload 
has been so heavy that, you know, they would never say to us, 
and we would never listen, don't do that bill, but they will 
have other priorities, and I have to, you know, do where the 
committee is going first. That is what I have to do first.
    So I can only apologize that we haven't been able to do it 
yet, and I agree with you, it has been a long time.
    Mr. Carter. Can you commit to me that you will come up with 
a score for me soon?
    Dr. Swagel. Let me come back to you on that. I can't give 
you that commitment now, but I will come back to you.
    Mr. Carter. Well, and it was kind of my next question, and 
that is, how do you determine which ones move to the top of the 
stack? I mean, what determines that? Just the amount of 
pressure you get?
    Dr. Swagel. You know, it's really we work with the 
committee staff, and so that means the Chair and the Ranking 
Member of the Committee will set our priorities, and then, you 
know, we work, of course, with leadership in both chambers to 
say, well, what is going to the floor of the chamber? And then 
everything else comes after those two priorities.
    Mr. Carter. All right. Well, look, I need help on this one, 
okay? I am a subcommittee chair, but I am not a committee 
chair, so I am sure I don't carry as much influence as the 
committee chair does, but we need this. Four percent of all 
retail pharmacies, of independent retail pharmacies, are 
closing every year. That is going to impact the accessibility 
of health care here in America, and again, all of us want 
accessible, affordable, quality health care.
    Let's move on. In December of 2023, your office published a 
report on the accuracy of your projections for the Fiscal Year 
2023. Is that a statutory requirement? Is that something you 
have to do?
    Dr. Swagel. That particular report is not required, but we 
do it as a transparency exercise.
    Mr. Carter. What kind of methodology did you use in 
determining whether to make it a public report? I mean, what 
inspired you to make it a public report?
    Dr. Swagel. I mean, anything that reflects on whether we 
get it right or wrong, I want the public to see that. In this 
one, we got it way wrong. It was a trillion dollars and that 
is, you know--I want that out there. I want people to be 
reactive.
    Mr. Carter. Would you be supportive of a law that required 
it?
    Dr. Swagel. I am sorry, say it again.
    Mr. Carter. Would you be supportive of a law that required 
you to have that report, to publish that report, every year?
    Dr. Swagel. I mean, like I said, it is not needed, but 
whatever the Congress thinks is the way we can support them, 
I'm happy to do it.
    Mr. Carter. I am going to take that as a yes. Okay. All 
right. One final question, if I could get it in. Panel of 
advisors, I know that that is important, but on your website, 
you say members of this panel generally serve two-year terms 
and are sometimes reappointed, but that is kind of vague. Tell 
me, who appoints these members and these boards, and how do you 
ensure bipartisanship?
    Dr. Swagel. So they are appointed by me as Director. Most 
of them--or many of them were on the panel when I arrived. It 
is a very distinguished group.
    Mr. Carter. Are they compensated?
    Dr. Swagel. It is like $500 a year, and the travel to----
    Mr. Carter. That would be a no.
    Dr. Swagel. I mean, virtually no. I mean, it is----
    Mr. Carter. Yeah, yeah.
    Dr. Swagel. And it is bipartisan, so we have members--we 
have people who worked in the Trump Administration, Obama, 
Bush, Clinton.
    Mr. Carter. Does anybody check you on this?
    Dr. Swagel. We do.
    Mr. Carter. Do you submit them to the Committee?
    Dr. Swagel. They are on our website, so it is public. The 
meetings, we have two meetings a year, and congressional staff 
attend the meetings.
    Mr. Carter. Now, one of the reasons for this hearing is to 
see how we can do better in helping you, and we do want to help 
you, and perhaps there should be a process where you submit 
names and the Committee approves them. You know, that would 
keep you from--whoever is in that position--it would keep them 
from criticism and make sure that we were getting 
bipartisanship in that.
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah. You know, I guess I wouldn't support that 
because this is a group of, you know, of really distinguished 
academics, mainly academics, not all, but mainly, who are doing 
this. They are basically not paid, as you said, and they do it 
for public service and to help us, and I would just want to 
keep them out of the political--kind of the political realm as 
much as possible and be as transparent as we are.
    And your staff can attend the meeting. I mean, we have lots 
of congressional----
    Mr. Carter. All right. I am going to have to absorb that 
and kind of think about that for a while before I press on with 
it, but thank you very much.
    Dr. Swagel. I am happy to come--happy to come and talk more 
about it.
    Mr. Carter. And it is 1770. Did you write that down? 
House----
    Mr. Swagel. I got it, 1770.
    Mr. Carter [continuing]. Resolution 1770.
    Mr. Burgess [presiding]. The gentleman's time has expired. 
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Good, 
for five minutes for questions.
    Mr. Good. Appreciate you being here today and submitting 
yourself to these questions. Appreciate the help you were a day 
or two ago with the information on my other committee, the Ed 
and Workforce Committee, on the cost of the higher ed reform 
bill that we are looking at.
    I want to talk about accuracies and particularly as it 
relates to the Inflation Increase Act. Again, the Inflation 
Increase Act they may refer to as the IRA, but it is not the 
IRA, it is the Inflation Increase Act, and it is now even 
admitted that it really wasn't about reducing inflation, of 
course, and it never was.
    But part of how that was sold by the Administration, by 
what was then the majority party in the House and the current 
majority in the Senate as well, was it was supposed to cost 
less than $400 billion, and now we have got Goldman Sachs 
saying $1.2 trillion, you got Credit Suisse saying $800 
billion, and I think there is acknowledgment, and mostly 
because of the climate credits, I guess, but can you speak to 
that inaccuracy of how that was sold and presented by the 
Administration and the majority party at the time, and we have 
missed so poorly on that?
    Dr. Swagel. I can. I will say something now. In a week when 
we publish our economic update, we will have a full page or two 
going into the details, so we will get you more in writing.
    The score was from the Joint Committee on Taxation. 
Anything tax they do, and then we update it. What has changed 
is there has been subsequent regulation. So the EPA put out a 
tailpipe emissions regulation that we think is going to 
basically push people toward electric vehicles. So that means 
more people are going to take up that EV tax credit. The 
Administration implemented the credit in a way----
    Mr. Good. Let me interject for a second.
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah, please.
    Mr. Good. It looks like the consumer is actually going the 
other way right now on vehicles.
    Dr. Swagel. No, that is right. That is right, and the EPA 
regulation is right now, it is a proposal. It is meant to, 
according to EPA, take effect for the 2027 model year. Will it 
actually happen? We don't know, because it really would go very 
far in pushing people toward electric vehicles, and as you 
said, that doesn't seem to be the market demand at the moment.
    So, you know, we are going to have to track it, but that 
would be the effect of greatly increasing the cost of that part 
of the bill, and I will just say other----
    Mr. Good. Now, is that portion alone responsible for some 
nearly trillion dollars to be offered?
    Dr. Swagel. It is about a third of it. The original JCT 
score was 400-something billion dollars and it is going to go 
up. It is not going to get up to a trillion dollars, but it 
will be like the $800s, and about a third of the difference is 
going to be that EPA regulation by itself.
    Mr. Good. Well, with respect to the Inflation Increase Act 
generally, will you give the scoring rubric on how you 
calculated this to Congress so we can look at it?
    Dr. Swagel. We can do that. I mean, in the report we 
publish next week, we won't go into the technical details, but 
we can provide that to you, to your staff.
    Mr. Good. I think that would be important for appropriate 
oversight and accountability, and there is some perception that 
you may or may not be aware of, I don't know if it has been 
alleged today, that CBO has leaned left, has leaned to the 
other side.
    With the IRS funding, it was projected, the increased IRS 
funding that was part of the Inflation Increase Act, it was 
projected that it would bring in $2.9 billion in Fiscal Year 
2023, but it only was $160 million. This year CBO has expected 
the IRS funding would bring in $7.8 billion this year, but so 
far it is only $360 million. Can you speak to that?
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah. Again, it is a challenging part for us 
because we have to figure out, well, where is the IRS going to 
spend their money and how quickly? They wouldn't tell us. You 
know, maybe they didn't even know at the time, and so we just 
said, okay, they are going to put the money in the place where 
they get the highest return, you know, from the past studies.
    In the end, they did it differently. They went into 
customer service. So, as you said, they didn't spend the money 
on the kind of tax collection.
    Mr. Good. Again, that is some of the justification that 
they made for the IRS expansion was, here is the revenue that 
is going to come from it, but conversely, if you go back to the 
TCJA tax bill from a few years ago, CBO projected revenue would 
be $22.6 trillion from 2018 to 2023, but actual revenue was 
over a trillion dollars higher, $23.6 trillion, than what was 
projected.
    Dr. Swagel. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there is so much 
water under the bridge since--so many developments since the 
TCJA. We said that would boost investment. It did. We said that 
would boost GDP. It did, and it would boost revenue.
    In the middle of 2018, there was a large set of tariffs put 
in place that went in the other direction with business 
investment, and we can't separate out those effects, and then, 
of course, the pandemic.
    So, yes, you know, and the subsequent high inflation. So 
revenues are higher, exactly as you said. How much of that is 
TCJA? How much of that is the inflation? We can't parse those 
out.
    Mr. Good. My time has expired. Thank you, sir.
    Dr. Swagel. Okay. Thank you.
    Mr. Burgess. The gentleman yields back. The Chair thanks 
the gentleman. Seeing no other Members to ask questions, I do 
have several letters from authorizing committees to submit for 
the record, highlighting the need for oversight and stronger 
collaboration between CBO and Congress. These include letters 
from the Committee on Ways and Means, Committee on Agriculture, 
Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Committee on Small Business, 
Committee on House Administration, the Committee on Armed 
Services.
    [The information follows:]
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    Mr. Burgess. I also have submissions for the record from 
stakeholders about reforms to the CBO and increasing 
transparency, including the Cato Institute, Americans for 
Prosperity, Economic Policy and Innovation Center, and an 
opinion letter published in the Wall Street Journal titled, 
``How to keep the CBO Honest When It Scores Spending Bills.''
    [The information follows:]
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    Mr. Burgess. Director Swagel, I want to thank you for 
spending so much time with us today and appreciate your candid 
and forthright answers to the questions.
    Please be advised that Members may submit written questions 
to be answered later in writing. Those questions and your 
answers will, in fact, be made part of the formal hearing 
record. Any Members who wish to submit questions or extraneous 
material for the record may do so within seven days.
    And with that, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:36 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
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