Answers to Questions from Members of Congress

Posted by
Doug Elmendorf
on
March 25, 2013

After CBO participates in Congressional hearings, the Members of the Committees before which we have testified often send us questions that they did not have time to ask during the hearings themselves. Our answers to such “questions for the record” are ultimately included in the reported proceedings for those hearings.

In February I testified before both the Senate and House Budget Committees on the outlook for the budget and the economy. Our answers to some of the follow-up questions may be of general interest, so starting tomorrow and running through Friday, we’ll post four of them—responding to questions from Members of both the House and the Senate and of both parties. (We’ll paraphrase the questions, but the answers we’ll post are identical to what we sent to the committees.)

In addition, I testified a few weeks ago before the Legislative Branch Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee about CBO’s funding request for the coming fiscal year. That hearing also led to several follow-up questions, one of which seems likely to be of general interest. That question and our answer appear in the next blog post today.