needed to fulfill CBO's mission. Addressing these concerns has increased our entire pay scale in recent years and has led us to provide new benefits such as bonus authority. Examples of our more difficult recruitment and retention situations include these: 1. To fill certain of the critical skills, particularly in the health area, we have turned to hiring very experienced midcareer analysts who command much higher salaries. Last year, we were unable to hire a new Ph.D. health economist after interviewing many candidates and making six offers. In the last two years, we have been able to hire only one Ph.D. macroeconomist and just one Ph.D. tax economist. 2. Competition for new graduates from economics, public policy, and public administration schools is fierce. For example, we have had to raise offering salaries significantly for new M.P.A.s (roughly 30 percent) since 1998. 3. We have also been losing some of our most talented younger staff and, in their first several years, have been trying to increase merit pay for analysts whose pay has traditionally lagged behind that of their peers with similar jobs in the executive branch. Question. About 25 percent of your mandatory increase is for personnel benefits. What factors are driving these costs? Answer. Almost half of that increase is related to a shift in our workforce to younger employees with less government service. These employees are covered by the newer retirement plan, which costs CBO twice as much as the CSRS. This shift is expected to continue at a rate of about 3 percent per year as more CBO employees retire and are replaced. The other large item in this category is the additional cost for the resurgence of health insurance premium increases. Question. In your request, you outlined cost savings of nearly $400,000 that would help offset inflationary and other operating increases. How have you achieved these savings? Answer. Broadly speaking, we have gone through all of our potentially controllable expenses to look at whether we can reduce them. For example, by culling our mailing lists we reduced postage and printing costs. By analyzing our phone costs, we identified unneeded phone lines, substituted new phone cards for higher priced calling cards, and tightened our policy on who arranges phone service. We also looked at maintenance contracts, software licenses, and subscriptions for periodicals and eliminated those that we no longer needed or that were not cost-effective. Another example is our efforts to move more of our publishing and distribution to the WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 2001. U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WITNESSES HON. JAY EAGEN, CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER TIMOTHY CAMPEN, DIRECTOR, HOUSE INFORMATION RESOURCES HON. JEFF TRANDAHL, CLERK OF THE HOUSE HON. WILSON S. LIVINGOOD, SERGEANT AT ARMS OPENING STATEMENT Mr. TAYLOR. Good morning. The subcommittee will come to order. We will begin our hearings now and take up the budget request for the House of Representatives. The House budget request totals $882 million; that includes funds for the operation of the Member offices, committees, leadership, and the administrative operations of the House. We want to welcome the officers of the House who are with us today: Jeff Trandahl, Clerk of the House; Wilson Livingood, the Sergeant-at-Arms, who will join us in a few minutes, and Jay Eagen, Chief Administrative Officer. We also have with us today Geraldine Gennet, the House General Counsel; John Miller, the House Law Revision Counsel; M. Pope Barrow, Jr., the House Legislative Counsel; and Steve McNamara, the House Inspector General. Mr. Eagen has prepared the House budget for the President's budget submission and will lead the formal presentation to the subcommittee. We have all your prepared statements. They have been given to the subcommittee, and we will print them in the record. [The statements of Mr. Eagen, Mr. Trandahl, Mr. Livingood, Ms. Gennet, Mr. Miller, Mr. Barrow, and Mr. McNamara follow:] STATEMENT OF JAY EAGEN CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES to the Subcommittee on Legislative Appropriations of the House Committee on Appropriations on the fiscal year 2002 (FY 2002) Budget estimates for the U.S. House of Representatives and certain "Joint Items." OPENING STATEMENT Chairman Taylor and Members of the Subcommittee, it is a pleasure to be appearing before this Subcommittee to testify on the Fiscal Year 2002 budget request for the House of Representatives and certain joint items. As established at the beginning of the 104th Congress, the CAO is the chief budget official of the U.S. House of Representatives and is responsible for the presentation of the House budget before your Subcommittee. Later in this hearing I will further outline the Fiscal Year 2002 budget request for the offices of the Chief Administrative Officer. I am joined here today with Jeff Trandahl and Bill Livingood. We stand ready to assist the Subcommittee in any way as you work to compile the Fiscal Year 2002 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill. |