Other Authorized Employees Summary by Object Class

1987

Actual

Other Authorized Employees Salaries, Officers and Employees,

SCHEDULE C1- SALARIES, OFFICERS AND EMPLOYEES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
OTHER AUTHORIZED EMPLOYEES
DETAILED ANALYSIS OF CHANGE BY ORGANIZATION

Dear Mr. Chairman:

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
LEE H HANDTON INDIANA

VICE CHAIRMAN

AUGUSTUS HAWKINS CALIFORNIA
DAVID A OBEY WISCONSIN
JAMES H SCHEUER NEW YORK
FORTNEY PETE: STARK CALIFORNIA
SOLAR? NEW YORK

STEPHEN

CHALMERS WYLIE ONIO
OLYMPIAJ SNOWE MAINE
HAMILTON FISH JO NEW YORK
J ALEX MCMILLAN NORTH CAROLINA

I am pleased to submit to the Legislative Branch
Appropriations Subcommittee this letter of justification for
the budget request of the Joint Economic Committee for Fiscal
Year 1989. The Joint Economic Committee will be chaired by a
member of the House of Representatives during the 101st
Congress, as you know, and this letter of justification
represents my best judgement concerning the resources the
next chairman will need in the fiscal year beginning October,

1988.

I offer this explanation at a time when, in my view, the
Committee's work is more important than ever-- extraordinary
uncertainty prevails with respect both to the course of the
economy in the short run and the magnitude of the economic
challenges that will confront us over the longer term.
Forecasters are in general agreement that growth in the
economy is slowing-- but there is no general agreement on the
The October 19 drop in
timing or severity of the slowdown.
the stock market was an event without precedent, and as one
witness told the Committee at a recent hearing, "There is no
way to predict the consequences of a unique event by looking
The implications of the debtor status
at historical data."

of the United States, which for most of this century has been
a creditor nation, are just beginning to be discerned and
analyzed; and it remains to be seen whether monetary policy
will be focused as in the past on assuring growth in the
domestic economy or whether, in the words of a senior
official at the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. will
have to tailor monetary and interest rate policy more to
external considerations..

page 2

Before setting out my estimate of the Committee's budget requirements for fiscal year 1989, let me summarize briefly the Committee's work thus far in the 100th Congress and the prospects for this session. In forty-nine hearings last year the Committee and its subcommittees focused especially on issues relating to the international economy and the U.S. role in it, and on those · areas of the domestic economy where continuing prudent investments are crucial to the Nation's future economic strength, including education and training, research and development and the Nation's physical infrastructure. The Committee has also continued to monitor developments with respect to the federal statistical infrastructure, which plays a critical role in making available the accurate, comprehensive and timely information on which major policy decisions in the private and public sectors depend.

Over the past year the Committee has established a broad agenda of studies undertaken either by members of the Committee staff or highly regarded economists in the private sector. The Committee's mid-year study, "A Legacy of Debt," examined the foreign debt problem, the constraints it imposes, and strategies for the future. Concern about the threat to the world economy posed by the huge and growing imbalances in international trade flows has also led the Committee to initiate a series of studies of the world's major surplus countries; the first of these, a study of the Taiwan economy, was released last year, and others are nearing completion. While in no way minimizing the gravity and complexity of the U.S. trade deficit, these studies examine the consequences of unprecedented surpluses in the context of the world trading system.

The Committee has worked with the Congressional Research Service in scheduling a major symposium on the Swedish economy, which over the past decade has faced economic challenges comparable in some respects to our own. Swedish policies will be discussed on February 25 by prominent representatives of Swedish labor and business, along with U.S. labor and business representatives and economists, in a public forum of interest to