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1 Answers to Questions for the Record following a Hearing on CBO's Appropriation Request for Fiscal Year 2021 Conducted by the Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, Senate Committee on Appropriations 1 (May 22, 2020)

handle is hein.congrec/astqsf0001 and id is 1 raw text is: ~MAY 22, 2020 Answers to Questions for the Record Following a Hearing on CBO's Appropriation Request for Fiscal Year 2021 Conducted by the Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, Senate Committee on Appropriations On March 11, 2020, the Senate Committee on Appropriations convened a hearing at which Phillip L. Swagel, the Congressional Budget Offices Director, testified about the agency' appropriation request.' After the hearing, Ranking Member Murphy submitted questions for the record. 7his documentprovides CBO's answers. It is available at www.cbo.gov/publication/56366 Question. Under a flat budget, ... at what point would you have to make furloughs and what would that mean for CBO? What other cost-cutting strategies would you have to implement to meet constraints? Answer. If CBO's funding for fiscal year 2021 was set at the amount provided for 2020, the agency would have to hold spending $2.4 million (or 4.2 percent) below its budget request for fiscal year 2021-but the budget gap would effectively total $2.8 million, given the agen- cy's unanticipated needs for 2021 related to COVID-19. Those unanticipated needs include additional expenses for information technology (IT) to support teleworking and purchases of data needed to carry out analysis related to the pandemic. Making cuts totaling $2.8 million would be a challenge. CBO would cut nonpersonnel spending where possible-for example, spending on staff travel, training, and consulting services. Even so, the main source of savings would have to be cuts in spending on personnel, which accounts for most of the agency's budget. CBO could avoid furloughs by eliminating performance bonuses, severely cutting recruitment bonuses, freezing hiring, and allowing the agency's workforce to shrink through attrition. Question. How would a flat budget affect recent and current year hires and their capacity to produce? Answer. Under a flat budget, on the basis of its latest payroll projections, CBO would prob- ably lose 10 to 15 full-time equivalents by the end of fiscal year 2021. For the past several years, CBO has sought to add staff who can help make the agency's work as transparent and responsive as possible. Under a hiring freeze, those efforts would stall-or even be partially reversed-if any of those employees left the agency or if they had to be redeployed to work on other efforts for which the agency was shorthanded. Moreover, as employees retired or resigned, the remaining staff could have a mix of skills that did not properly match the 1. See testimony of Phillip L. Swagel, Director, Congressional Budget Office, before the Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch of the Senate Appropriations Committee, CBO's Appropriation Request for Fiscal Year 2021 (March 11, 2020), www.cbo.gov/publication/56188.

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