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1 Answers to Questions for the Record following a Hearing Conducted by the House Committee on the Budget on CBO Oversight: The Role of Behavioral Modeling in Scoring and Baseline Construction 1 (July 26, 2018)

handle is hein.congrec/cboaqtbv0001 and id is 1 raw text is: JULY 26, 2018 Answers to Questions for the Record Following a Hearing Conducted by the House Committee on the Budget on CB0 Oversight: The Role of Behavioral Modeling in Scoring and Baseline Construction On February 27, 2018, the House Committee on the Budget convened a hearing at which Keith Hall, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified about how CBO does its analyses along with Jessica Banthin, Deputy Assistant Director for Health, Retirement, and Long- Term Analysis, and Jeffey Kling, Associate Director for Economic Analysis.1 After the hearing, Chairman Womack submitted questions for the record. This document provides CBO's answers. It is available at www.cbo.gov/publication/53796. Question. Why is confidentiality a prerequisite to getting agency information? Answer. Confidentiality is sometimes required to make use of certain data that improve CBO's estimates. For example, CBO's baseline projections of revenues are improved by using detailed information about taxes paid by businesses and individuals. The data contain confidential information and cannot be made publicly available. Confidentiality may also be important in obtaining information informally from staff of other government agencies, who might otherwise be reluctant to share information or judgments that are not in the public domain. Question. Are there other ways to get the same information that do not require confidentiality? Answer. Obtaining confidential data is usually a slow and costly process, so CBO gener- ally relies on confidential data only when the information is superior to nonconfidential alternatives. Question. Does CBO use commercial models or are all of CBO's models developed in-house? Answer. CBO uses some commercial models as complements to its own. For example, CBO licenses macroeconomic forecasting models from two firms and uses them to inform the development of its own forecasting model. To take another example, CBO has purchased access to models developed by actuarial firms to assist with some estimates related to health insurance, such as the estimates of deductibles that would occur under certain proposals. 1. See testimony of Keith Hall, Director, Congressional Budget Office, before the House Committee on the Budget, Seven Things to Know About CBOAnalyses (February 27, 2018), www.cbo.gov/publication/53603.

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