IC. PROGRAM TYPE CHANGES 1. Legislation EXPLANATION OF CHANGES SHOWN ON SCHEDULE C These savings will be realized from the continued efficiencies ¦ and price advantage of the transfer of our major mainframe system : from commercial vendors to HIS, plus the transfer of expensive mainframe applications to microcomputers. (428): 1 277 : 13b. Telecommunications system acquisition cost net of operating savings: 13c. Replacement and upgrade of word processing equipment This request includes the replacement of word processors as well as the addition of Xerox Star equipment originally planned ¦ 40 : OVERVIEN OF CBO'S ROLE The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 established CBO as a nonpartisan Congressional support agency. Its mandate is to be analytically precise, professional, and politically unbiased in providing the Congress with information on matters of budgetary and fiscal policy. In addition to the work products specified in the Act, including scorekeeping, five-year cost estimates of reported bills, and five-year projections of new budget authority, outlays, and revenues, the Congressional Budget Office has three principal statutory tasks: (1) to provide information to the two Budget Committees on all patters within their jurisdiction and such further reports "as may be necessary and appropriate"; (2) to provide information to the appropriating and tax committees on request; and (3) on request of any other committees. to provide information compiled for the budget, taxing, and appropriating committees plus "to the extent practicable" additional requested information. The Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (P.L. 99-177) assigned CBO additional statutory tasks through 1991 when the act expires. Twice a year, the CBO, working with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the Executive Branch, must report whether the projected deficit exceeds the saxinus deficit amount allowed by the law for the fiscal year. If it does, CBO and OMB calculate the amounts and percentages of budgetary resources that aust be sequestered to eliminate any deficit excess. The Director of CBO is also responsible for alerting the Congress to a recession or downturn in the economy that night warrant the suspension of the Balanced Budget Act's deficit target. The CBO will respond to these new tasks as it has carried out past responsibilities. As a support agency of the legislative branch. the CBO's highest priority is to serve the Congress. CBO'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS DURING FY 1986 Once again in FY 1986, budget issues dominated the legislative agenda of the Congress. As a result, the work of the CBO figured prominantly in Congressional deliberations of the issues before the nation. Nowhere were the efforts of the CBO more evident in satisfying the needs of the Congress for accurate information than during both the initial implementation and constitutional challenge of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. The first sequestration report issued jointly by CBO and OMB in February resulted in a sequestration of FY 1986 appropriated funds. This work came at the time of year when the agency's regular workload was at its heaviest and it was already under pressure to produce its primary baseline budget projection, economic forecast, and analysis of the president's budget. All agency personnel regularly worked overtime to meet the ever increasing needs of the Congress for budgetary information. During the year, the Budget Analysis Division produced hundreds of bill cost estimates, regular scorekeeping reports (more quickly than before), and baseline budget projections against which Congress was able to to measure its various actions. The division also continued its assessBent of the budgetary process with a report on implicit federal subsidies in government sponsored enterprises. In addition to its work of providing the Congress with regular analyses and projections of the U.S. economy, the Fiscal Analysis Division aided in the preparation of numerous other reports, especially in assessing the impact of a variety of issues on the international economy. In addition to its revenue scorekeeping reports and revenue cost estimates, the Tax Analysis Division kept abreast of the tax overhaul legislation, regularly providing the Budget Committees with estimates of various proposals. The CBO's four program divisions--Natural Resources and Commerce. Human Resources and Community Development, National Security, and General Government--continued to aid the Congress as it addressed issues of spending and taxation among competing national priorities. The program divisions helped Congress focus its debate by organizing and presenting budget analyses along the lines of policy goals through reports such as Economic Viability of Conrail; Trends in Educational Achievement; Budgeting for Defense Inflation; and, Employee Turnover in the Federal Government. The divisions completed many formal reports in FY 1986, along with scores of less formal responses--unpublished papers, staff memoranda, letters--to Congressional inquiries. The program divisions also helped ease the burden on budget analysis cost-estimating units by developing sophisticated analytic computer models for federal programs that have been used not only by the BAD units, but also by budget and authorizing committees to estimate costs and revenues of specific program options. Micro-to-mainframe capabilities were developed by our automated systems staff, enabling analysts to quickly move data between their Bicrocomputer models and mainframe data bases, thereby increasing productivity by reducing manual data handling and freeing more time for the actual analysis of data and lowering costs by reducing connect and cpu times. Also, in FY 1986, CBO continued its efforts to reduce present and future costs by purchasing reproduction equipment at an attractive price, utilizing the new Hill-wide WATS system, and CHANGES IN CBO'S PLANS FOR FY 1986 AND FY 1987 During FY 1986, the agency had several areas with significant differences between planned and actual expenditures. Travel costs were $17,000 below budget due to a larger portion of trips being paid for by sponsoring organizations, as well as a 20% drop in the number of trips. "Communications, utilities and rent costs were $62.000 less than the budgeted amount of $425,000. About $30,000 of this was due to reduced mailing costs and $21,000 was due to long distance savings from rate decreases and the use of the new hill-wide WATS. Printing costs were $44,000 below target because the August sequestration report was not printed since there was no change from January. Costs for 'systems, data and model development" were $78,000 above target due primarily to the use of funds available from other areas for a project to transfer a mainframe model to a microcomputer. Commercial ADP timesharing was $106,000 below target due to continued savings from both the transfer of major Budget Analysis applications to HIS, and the transfer of expensive modeling and graphics functions to microcomputers, mainly in Fiscal Analysis. ADP software purchases were $20,000 below budget due to a slower than planned release of upgrades. And, finally, equipment purchases were $56,000 over budget mainly because of the purchase of a copy machine not originally planned. During FY 1987, changes from the original budget request to the appropriated amount mainly reflect efforts to deal with the 10% cut. Since just 4 out of the requested 10 staff positions were allowed, there was a savings of $535,000 in pay, benefits and computer costs. The intern program was not restored to its pre-sequestration level, resulting in a savings of $44,000. And microcomputer purchases were scaled back by about $200,000. About $800,000 of the cut was taken in the area of ADP timesharing costs due to the continued savings from the aeasures mentioned above. The four additional staff positions allowed in FY 1987 were all assigned to the Budget Analysis Division. The division will utilize these positions by adding an additional analyst to the two cost estimating units dealing with human resources and natural resources, and by adding a computer analyst and production and secretarial support to the systems unit. |