Pro-Growth Budgeting Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. I thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment. If I did not know my friend from Virginia as well as I do, I would have thought I had detected a little sense of sarcasm in his remarks, but, frankly, I know that is not the case. I know it is a sincere proposal.

I must say, though, as chairman of the Legislative Branch Subcommittee of Appropriations, which has jurisdiction over the CBO, I am pretty familiar with its operations, its resources, and its capabilities, and the simple fact of the matter is that the amendment would create an unsustainable amount of work for the CBO for no benefit in new or additional information to the Congress of the United States. By arbitrarily picking $1 billion as the threshold for the analysis, this amendment would force CBO to conduct analyses on dozens of additional bills.

CBO Director Elmendorf wrote to Chairman Ryan yesterday to explain the limits of their capability and capacity. Let me quote from his letter:

The CBO would not be able to perform the analyses envisioned by that set of amendments: We do not have the analytical capabilities or the level of staffing that would be needed to undertake and complete the tasks that would be assigned to us, nor would the usual timetable for considering legislation allow the time that would be required to complete such analyses, even if we did not face those analytical and staffing constraints.

The time that it would take the CBO to produce these additional estimates showing no discernible impact would delay Congress' legislative work at both the committee level and on the floor. The simple fact is, the amendment is unworkable and ill-conceived, and I urge its rejection.

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