Chairman Arrington Delivers Opening Remarks at Hearing Entitled “Congress and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO): Examining Ways to Improve CBO”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) delivered opening remarks at the hearing “Congress and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO): Examining Ways to Improve CBO.”
Click HERE to watch Chairman Arrington’s Opening Remarks
Opening Statement as Delivered:
“One of the things that we have a responsibility to do on behalf of you, voters, taxpayers, and all Americans is to ask questions of the heads of our agencies that run the inner workings of government, that this gentleman, Dr. Phill Swagel, is in charge of analyzing legislation and policy for its financial and economic impact so that we can know when we're trying to decide what solutions we should apply to the problems that exist or the challenges we face.
We have to know what the cost benefit is for these things because we don't have endless sources of money, although we act like it. We have to steward tax dollars as we solve problems. Dr. Phill Swagel and his team do that analysis well and accurately which is not easy to do. If it's timely we get that information in a way that we can expedite the process. We can govern this nation a whole lot better. This hearing is about how we always look to continually improve the process of stewarding tax dollars, governing, and lawmaking. We have our own issues as members of Congress. We have procedural failures. We have, as Tom McClintock would say, it's not procedural, it's human failure. I think it's probably a little bit of both, because incentives drive behavior, and we're trying to work to restructure incentives so we get our work done on time.
We’re at a place where we haven't done all the appropriations bills. We passed a budget out of committee, but it never went to the floor. We're going to have constructive criticism of how we can improve CBO’s piece on this. There’s a whole lot of work we're doing. My Democrat colleagues have decided that it's important to fix the broken process. That committee has yielded 11 bills to address some of the dysfunction in our congressional budget process. Ten of the 11 were bipartisan. Last night, for the first time ever in history, we saw the unanimous passage in the Senate of our bill. It is a small step for man, but it is a big step for mankind when it comes to the budget process. It is going to be signed by the President to empower you and equip you with federal data to give us more complete and accurate information.
We’re cutting a pretty good path, and I hope we continue to build on that momentum. We have solutions and a list of legislative reforms like having a more organized structure of reports. Let's have that timeliness associated with the information we receive, so there's more certainty and continuity in the process of and the flow of information.
Another example would be doing continuous oversight regularly. I'm not picking on my Democrat friends, because Republicans have their own ways that we've screwed things up and not followed through, but it was six years before we even had an oversight hearing when I came to this position. I think we should all agree you ought to come at least two times a year for this important exercise. I hope we can get bipartisan support for some of this, if not all of it.”
