CBO role and performance: enhancing accuracy, reliability

OCLC Number: (OCoLC)50616625 Subject: Budget -- United States. Excerpt: ...ciation for the work that they do. Conversely, there are areas in a large organization that we believe could use some improvement, and one example that comes immediately to mind that we have heard criticism about not only from the Budget Committee, but also from other committees, is when we go after health cost estimates. We have observed that the unit involving health has had a history of--and again, I am just giving you direct from customer surveys--have been accused of being discourteous, perennially late with estimates, and have to some extent--again from customer service reports--have had a poor grasp of how the House operates and how we use some of those economic estimates from time to time. Again, I don't want to name names. This is an opportunity to talk about improvement, and this is one area that has been frustrating. This may also be one of the most complicated areas, too, which may in part be the answer, but we believe it could stand some improvement. So we have a full plate today, and I am happy, as always, to have the opportunity to hear from our distinguished Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Dan Crippen, who is hear to testify, and I look forward to your testimony today. We are also glad to have Rudolph Penner, who is a senior fellow from the Urban Institute; Kevin Hassett, who is from the American Enterprise Institute; and William Gale, who is from Brookings. These are our panelists for today. We look forward to their testimony. I know Members have expressed some interest from time to time on many of these topics, and so I hope we will begin today by starting to answer some of those questions, get some of those issues out on the table. And, as I say, this is the first step in what we hope is really a never-ending process of providing better communication, oversight and understanding between our two entities. With tha...